


Bone Deep

by 2ns



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ending Fix, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, sandrya
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 08:51:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19292374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ns/pseuds/2ns
Summary: I know a killer when I see one . . .Fix-it fic for GOT Season 8 ending.  Story picks up after Arya's conversation with Jon before he kills Daenerys.  Arya goes back to Maegor's Holdfast, determined to see if she can discover Cersei's fate.  She's pursued by a raven that drives her deeper into the keep where she finds Sandor's body.  Anguished, she demands the Many Faced God return his face to her, and miraculously, he does.  Broken almost beyond comprehension, Arya takes Sandor with her when she leaves Westeros.Don't you want to be free?  Then come with me and be free . . .Work in progress.





	1. Unspoken and Owed

“I know a killer when I see one.”

Jon studied Arya.  His eyes travelled over her face, her blood-crusted hair, her little Needle.  He pursed his lips and nodded slowly before stalking away after the Dragon Queen.

Arya watched him as long as she dared before melting back into the shadows of the crumbling Barbican.  It had been easy to slip past the Unsullied when they were in ranks, their focus entirely on their queen.  Now that they had broken formation and were dispersing, her path out of the Red Keep through the square was blocked by a dozen Unsullied stationed on the exterior of the Barbican.  She concealed herself amongst the rubble as best she could, trying not to breathe in the ash that continued to rain down upon them.  She tried not to think about who or what that ash may have so recently been.

After allowing a column of Unsullied to march through the courtyard, she darted from shadow to shadow in the wan light, skirting the Throne Room.  Since it was completely devoid of any strategic value, she avidly hoped that the Godswood was unguarded.  Perhaps if she could slip into the wood, she could hide until night had fallen and she had a better chance of escaping the Red Keep.

Miraculously, the Godswood appeared to be almost entirely untouched, even by the wrath of the dragons.  Under Cercei’s reign, it looked as though the sacred grove had gone unkempt, and it was wildly overgrown.  Unlike the Godswoods in the North, there were no weirwoods, but still it held the same deep, sacred silence she remembered from home.  The Heart Tree whispered her name, but she didn’t dare answer the call and allow it to draw her to the center of the Godswood. 

As Arya followed the east wall of the Godswood, she spooked a raven that sent up a raucous call.  Within moments, she was surrounded by black wings that beat at her from every side and a cacophony of squawking birds.  She tried to retreat the way she had come, but the birds pecked and clawed at her.  Arya had no choice but to flee blindly deeper into the Godswood, praying to the old gods that none of the Unsullied would come to investigate the disturbance.

Breathlessly, Arya fetched up against an ancient wrought iron gate, hanging half off its hinges.  The damned birds had left off for the most part, but a single raven alighted on a stone bench and croaked angrily at her.

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “Fuck off.”

The bird hopped closer and croaked again, but Arya ignored it.  Instead, she peered around the wall of the Godswood, looking for sentinels and a place to hide until dark.  There, blanketed by several feet of drifting ash, lay the ruins of Maegor’s Holdfast. 

Every waking moment for the past two weeks, Arya had imagined this place.  Rehearsed in her mind how she would slip into the Red Keep.  Counted off the all secret passages she and Clegane knew in and out of the keep and holdfast.  Fantasized about the wide array of ways she could stretch out Cersei’s suffering before she killed her.  Instead, the crazy Targaryan bitch had incinerated King’s Landing, and barely one stone sat upon another in the Red Keep. 

_I’m Arya Stark.  I’m going to kill Queen Cercei._

Fucking whore.  Traitorous, rutting, incestuous cunt killed her father.  Killed her mother.  Killed her brother and his wife and their unborn babe.  Crippled her brother.  Emptied Winterfell of its men so the Boltons could raze her home to the ground, brutalize Sansa, mutilate Theon, and murder Rickon. 

_Go home girl.  The fire will get her.  Or one of the Dothraki.  Or maybe that dragon will eat her.  Doesn’t matter.  She’s dead, and you’ll be dead too if you don’t get out of here._

_I’m going to kill her._

Arya pressed her face against the cold iron bars and glared at what remained of the hold.  Every vile, underhanded scheme that had pulled the threads that unraveled her life had been woven within those walls. 

_You think you’ve wanted revenge a long time?  I’ve been after it all my life.  It’s all I care about, and look at me . . .  Look at me! You want to be like me?  You come with me, you die here._

She clenched the iron bars of the gate so tightly that the stitches of her gloves strained and threatened to snap.  Arya’s heart was slamming against her throat, and she couldn’t catch her breath as her eyes travelled over what little remained of the once proud stronghold of the royal family of Westeros.  The Lannister whore had deprived Arya of her family, her home, her childhood.  In the end, she’d even deprived Arya of the only man she’d ever completely trusted.

_Sandor._

Even now, she didn’t know how or if Cercei had died.  Even if she had, there was no death that would have been good enough for Cercei.  Or the Mountain.

Arya strode towards the collapsed corner of the holdfast, her blood begining to boil and burn through her veins like acid.  _Cersei.  The Mountain._   She had to see, needed to know.  There was a grey buzzing in her ears, and she barely registered the raven flapping its wings and screaming after her.  _Cersei.  The Mountain._  

_I’m Arya Stark.  I’m going to kill Queen Cercei._

_It’s all I care about . . . I’ve been after it all my life._

Arya came here to claim a life for the Many Faced God.  Cersei Lannister’s name had been spoken, and it could not be unspoken.  The Mountain’s name had been spoken, and it could not be unspoken.  Arya was owed lives by the Many Faced God, and she wanted them.

Arya plowed through deeper and deeper drifts of ash mixed into the detritus of lives well-lived.  Here a splintered bedstead, there singed tapestries.  A chair had landed nearly intact on its spindly legs, though the silk upholstery was shredded and singed.  Finely wrought metal sprouted up at odd angles, and shattered glass of every color glittered everywhere.  The raven flew ahead of Arya, hopping and gliding from place to place, and without conscious decision, she began following it single-mindedly into the ruins.

At the foot of the holdfast, the collapsing stone had filled in much of the dry moat, crushing the iron pikes below.  The raven screamed ever more frantically at Arya.  It doubled back when she slowed, stumbling over blocks of shattered stone.

 _Cersei.  The Mountain._   _It’s all I care about._

Finally, the raven alighted on a finely carved pillar, lying on its side.  When Arya walked past, it took wing and flew into her face.

“Get the fuck off!  I’m owed those faces, damn you!” 

She swung her arm wildly, trying to slap the bird away from her head.  As she struggled over the debris, she took a step back and lost her footing against the downed pillar.  Arya tumbled nearly a dozen feet into the maw of the hold, slamming her head against broken stone, shattered glass biting at her face, and twisted iron snatching at her cloak.  She came to rest on a wide plain of cool cerulean.

Arya laid there a few minutes or perhaps a few hours, and soft, ashen light chased soft swirling darkness.

 _Cersei.  The Mountain._   _It’s all I care about._

_You come with me, you die here._

Arya’s eyes rolled back into her head and she lost consciousness.  Dark eyes and strong arms carried her away from fire and rage and blood, and she wept and wept and wept.  _Walder Frey . . . I’m going to kill Walder Frey . . ._

A sound like a dragon roaring and the rush of flames, but she did not burn.  Stone scraped on stone, and nails bit into her hands.   Arya woke to feathers in her ears, nose, and mouth.  Arya rolled over and pulled herself up onto her elbows, and she was a tiny pawn with all the world spread before her.  She laid her head on the sand and slept.

Strong arms and dark eyes bore her away from fire and fear and blood, and she screamed and screamed and screamed.  The dead tried to claw her flesh from her bones, but he wouldn’t permit it.  He was the shield that stood between her and the Many Faced God.  He did not waiver and he did not tire, though the night was dark and full of terrors.

_You come with me, you die here._

_Brown eyes, green eyes, and blue eyes . . .  What do we say to the God of Death?_

Arya woke with a start.  The raven was croaking and screaming, screaming and croaking, and he flapped his wings from atop a heap of rags.  She blinked her eyes in the clotting dusk and tried to gather her wits. 

Arya’s cheek was pressed against a small keep in Lannisport, but a broad streak of blood ran far, far north.  She pulled herself up onto hands and knees and shook her head to clear the ringing of her ears.  The raven flapped its wings frantically, lifted several inches from the rags and settled again, only to resume its squawking. 

Arya followed the trail of blood, crawling inch by agonizing inch across Cercei’s dominion, past Riverrun and Harrenhall and over the Trident.  Near the Twins, Arya’s fingers brushed the heel of a familiar boot whose owner had drug himself through the Neck, past Moat Cailin, and laid in a pool of his own cold, sticky blood with his fingers curled over the foundations of Winterfell.  Cold and gray as the ash falling on King’s Landing laid its one true knight, besmirching the magnificent map of in the Queen’s courtyard.

 _Cersei.  The Mountain._   _It’s all I care about._

_The Hound._

_Blue eyes . . . green eyes . . . and brown eyes . . . What do we say to the God of Death?_

“Not fucking today.”  The words came out a croak and a sob as she crawled the last few feet to his side and slapped the raven aside.  The bird finally relented, flapping and cackling through the gaping maw that was all that remained of the southwest corner of Maegor’s Holdfast.

Arya shook Sandor and called his name, but he didn’t respond.  “You worthless shit!  You’re going to just lay down and die now?”

Arya drug herself to her feet and hauled on his brigadine to turn him over.  It took a massive effort, but when she finally managed it, she was appalled at the state of him.  His brigadine was rent in dozens of places, and it appeared as though someone had tried to gouge his eyes out.  Arya kneeled in the pool of congealed blood and used her sleeve to wipe his face.  Beneath her breath, she cursed fluently in a combination of Braavosi, High Valyrian, and the common tongue.

“Stupid, rotten cunt!  What’s the point of revenge if you’re not alive to enjoy it?”  When he didn’t answer, Arya screamed in frustration and rage and grief, and slammed her fist into Clegane’s chest.  “I was owed fucking faces!  Cersei!”  She struck him again.  “The Mountain!”  Again.  “The fucking Hound!”  She slammed both fists over and over again into his chest hard enough that his breast bone cracked, but still his chest did not rise.  Still he did not draw breath. 

“You’ve already taken his face once!  I want it back, damn you!  After all the faces you’ve taken from me, I am owed this one!”  She turned to face what remained of the failing light and shrieked at her Many Faced God until her parched throat shredded, “Do you hear me, you faithless black fuck?  I am owed!  He was mine alone!  I unpseak his name!  Give him back!”

Behind her on the blood-soaked plains of the North, there was a weak, wet, spluttering cough.

“Seven hells, girl.  Can’t a man die in peace?”


	2. Derelict

“You’ll have to stand for the Stormlands, son.  There’s not another Baratheon for leagues.”

“No one is going to recognize—“

Davos snatched Gendry’s sleeve and drug him back from the water.  Gendry squinted into the thick morning fog and murmured, “What the bloody hells is that?”

The prow of a fishing skiff emerged from the swirling mist, riding low in the water and listing to the side where something dangled over the edge into the water.

Davos murmured, “Stay here,” and waded out into the bay.

The skiff had stopped, tangled in a stand of weeds, and Davos approached it with extreme caution.  Being ambushed in Blackwater Bay by a derelict once was quite enough, and he’d barely survived the last time it had happened.  He raised a brow in surprise when he drew close enough to see that it was a young woman’s leg that hung over the side of the boat, her foot trailing in the water.  He swallowed hard.  There were only a few women he could think of who could afford such fine riding boots.  There was only one who would wear them until the sole was nearly worn through the way this one had been, only one that would have made it her business to be in King’s Landing in the thick of the war.

Kneeling in the reeds at shore and squinting into the fog, Gendry mouthed, ‘What is it?’

Davos shook his head and held his hand up to indicate Gendry should stay there.  If he was right, he didn’t want the boy to see until he had a chance to prepare him.  Cautiously, he peeked over the edge of the boat and his mouth popped open in surprise.

At the bottom of the boat, soaked in filthy, briny muck, laid what was left of the Hound, and heaped unceremoniously on top of him was Arya Stark.  Clegane was covered in an alarming quantity of blood, and his brigadine was so thoroughly shredded that a few of the steel plates had fallen out and glinted dully from the bottom of the boat.  Based on his injuries and the awkward way Clegane was laying in the boat, Davos couldn’t imagine the Hound could have gotten in on his own.  It looked as though Arya had barely managed it herself. 

In the soft, gray light, Arya looked like a doll, pale, smashed, and discarded.  Her face was pressed into Clegane’s chest, and like Clegane, barely an inch of her had escaped being smeared with blood and offal.  The tide must have tugged the boat from shore and towed it into Blackwater Bay. 

In the days leading up to the Battle of Winterfell, Davos couldn’t count the number of times he’d glimpsed Arya and the Hound in one another’s company.  They often took their meals together in the great hall, saying little, drinking much, and both glaring so fiercely at anyone who came too close that few dared try.  The little he knew of the Hound barely recommended him as fit company for hardened men, and certainly not for the favored sister of the King of the North.  He had no idea how they knew one another, but their association appeared to be deep.  Entire conversations seemed to pass between Arya and the Hound through a lifted brow or a shift in stance.

Neither Clegane nor Arya had been seen since the night the funeral pyres had been lit at Winterfell.  Gendry had searched for her amongst the northern host once Jon Snow’s army set out for King’s Landing to no avail.  Davos wasn’t sure precisely what had happened between the lad and the king’s sister, though he suspected it was of a particularly personal nature.  Knowing that they hadn’t marched with Jon’s army, he couldn’t imagine how Arya and the Hound came to be here and in such a state.  To be honest, he wasn’t sure if either of them was even still alive.

Davos glanced at Gendry, pursed his lips, and began towing the boat to shore.

“What is it?”

“Lad, you need to prepare yourself.”

Gendry splashed into the water, reaching for the prow of the skiff, but Davos laid his hand on his chest to hold him back.  “Who’s in there?”

“Do you remember after the Battle of Winterfell, when you were looking for Lady Arya, and neither she nor the Hound could be found?”

“Aye . . . ?”

Davos grimaced.  “Son, she’s here.  They’re both—“

Gendry lunged for the boat, and Davos grabbed him. 

“Let me go!  I want to see—“

“Gendry!  You need to prepare yourself!”  Gendry paused and looked at Davos aghast.  “Son, I’m not sure she’s alive, and even if she is . . .”  He shook his head.  “It’s not good.  I can’t tell how much of the blood is hers, how much is his, and how much belongs to someone else.  Help me pull the boat out so we can see what can be done for them.”

As soon as they were sure it wouldn’t slide back into the bay, Gendry leaned over the boat and shook Arya’s shoulder.

“Arya, love, wake up.”  When she didn’t respond, he shook her harder, shouting, “Arya!”

“Gendry, no!”

Arya’s Valyrian dagger cleft the air between them.  Had Davos not hauled Gendry back, it would have sailed through his throat.

She crouched over Clegane with wild eyes and hissed, “Get the fuck back, you black bastard!  You can’t have him.”  She glared between Davos and Gendry, utterly unable to recognize them.  “Those names were spoken and their faces were mine to take.  Give me his instead!”

“Arya, it’s me!”  Gendry tried to take a step towards her, but Davos held him back.  “Arya—“

Her voice was raw.  “Don’t touch him!”

Davos hauled Gendry a few yards back up the beach.  “Go get help, son.  I’ll stay here with her and see to it she doesn’t come to any harm.”

“No!  I’ll stay.  If I just—“

Gendry tried to shove past Davos, but he restrained the smith.  “She doesn’t know you right now!  I’ve no idea what they’ve been through, but by the looks of it, they’ve been to the edge of the seventh hell and back.  Go find someone who can talk sense to her and bring them back.”

Gendry gaped at him.  “Who do you want me to get?  They’ve seized his Grace!”

Davos glanced back at Arya.  She was still crouched over Clegane, and the hand holding the Valyrian blade was shaking badly where it was braced on the edge of the boat.  She barely had the strength to lift her head from where it rested on Clegane’s chest.

“Get Lady Sansa, and tell her to hurry.”  Gendry opened his mouth to argue, but Davos shoved him in the direction of the camp.  “Go!”

In the ten minutes it took Sansa to arrive with a healer and a party of Northmen, Davos didn’t dare approach Arya.  From where he stood, he could hear her cursing in Braavosi and High Valyrian.

“Fucking cunt of a god.  You’ve taken almost everyone else from me.  I’ve served, damn you!”

Sansa dismounted and strode across the beach, ignoring Davos’s warnings.

“Arya?”

Arya’s head and blade snapped up, her hand clenched so tightly around the hilt of her knife that it trembled.  “I told you to fuck off.”

Sansa halted, but craned her neck to try to see into the bottom of the boat.  She narrowed her eyes dangerously and asked softly, “The two of you came to King’s Landing to finish your list, didn’t you?  Did you kill her?  Did you kill Cersei?”

Arya pressed her eyes shut and took several deep shuddering breaths.  She eased herself back onto her heels and rested the hand clutching her knife over Clegane’s heart.  When she opened her eyes again, she seemed to have come back to herself, and her eyes focused clearly on her sister.

“No.”  She glanced down at Clegane and continued, “He asked me to lay down my list and live.  Sandor said Daenerys would kill Cersei, and then he went after the Mountain.”

Sansa braved a few steps closer to the boat.  “Did he survive?”

Sadly, Arya shook her head.  “He gave his life to The Many Faced God to protect me again.  He’d been dead for hours by the time I found him.”  She lifted her head and glared at Sansa.  “But I asked the Many Faced God to give him back, and he did.”  
               

Gendry glanced nervously at Davos and murmured, “What’s she on about?  Who’s the Many Faced God?”  
               

Davos cocked a brow.  “The Braavosi don’t recognize the Seven.   They pray to the Many Faced God of death.”  He nodded solemnly in Arya’s direction.  “If what she says is true—“

“Can’t be.”  Gendry pushed his lip out belligerently and shook his head.  “The Stranger don’t  give the dead back.”

 “You saw the Red Woman call the power of the Lord of Light down upon the Night King’s army.  You ought to know better than to question a woman who claims to wield the power of her god.”

“That was different.  Arya must have been mistaken.”

Davos gaped at Gendry.  “I saw Arya Stark cut through dozens of the dead the way most highborn ladies cut through cake.  You really think she can’t tell whether a man’s dead or not?”  He snorted.  “He’s her friend for fuck’s sake!  Don’t you think she’d have checked?”

By the time Davos turned his attention back to Sansa, she’d nearly made her way to the boat. 

 “Is he still alive?  Is he breathing?”

Arya’s lip twisted, and murmured, “I’m not sure.”

“Will you let me check?”

Arya’s blade snapped back up, and she snarled, “Don’t touch him!”

Sansa held her hands up and advanced slowly.  “Sandor Clegane defended me against Joffry and saved my life in King’s Landing during a riot.  After the Battle of Blackwater Bay, he tried to take me home but I was too much a fool to go with him.  On my honor, I’d see him live as much as you would.  Just let me look, alright?”

Arya glanced between Clegane and her sister and reluctantly nodded, though she didn’t sheathe her dagger.  The sisters bent their heads together, and a few minutes later, Sansa had coaxed Arya from the boat and persuaded her to allow their men to carry Clegane away.  As Arya stumbled by at Sansa’s side, Gendry caught at her sleeve.  Without even meeting his eye, Arya tore her arm away and followed the men bearing away Clegane’s unconscious form.

“She barely looked at me.”

Davos clapped him on the shoulder.  “Don’t take it to heart, lad.  She’s been through an ordeal.  We all have.”  He sighed and watched the party of Northmen depart.  “There’s time.  Let her see to her friend and get some rest.”

Gendry snorted.  “The Hound’s not nobody’s friend.  Certainly not hers.”


	3. West of Westeros

Sandor moaned in agony as he began to surface from the sweetsleep.  Arya had fallen asleep yet again with her arms crossed on the edge of his bunk.  She lifted her leaden head and rubbed exhaustion blearily from her eyes.  Arya lit the lantern that swung from the ceiling beside the bunk and started getting ready.  Clean cloths, water, a clean sark . . . She fingered the vial of sweetsleep in consideration, trying to decide if it was time.

Nearly eight weeks had passed since the conclave naming Bran king of the Six Kingdoms.  During that time, Arya had dosed Sandor with the smallest possible dose of the poison, usually a half or quarter grain three times a day, to keep him unconscious while he recovered from the worst of his injuries.  Though she had plenty of the drug, she knew she couldn’t keep dosing him like she had.  Eventually, he wouldn’t wake up.  It had already been too long.  It was time they both faced what the Many Faced God had sent back to her. 

“Arya . . .”

Even after tending him for all this time, it still tore through her gut that the first and last word to cross his parched lips was always her name.  Arya pushed his sweat- tangled hair away from his face and grimaced when she realized he was aflame with fever again.  She dipped a stained cloth into a shallow basin of tepid water and sponged his face, careful to avoid the heavy bandages she’d wrapped around his eyes.

“Arya?”

Predictably, as his muddled mind cleared, he clawed at the bandages.

“Sandor, stop.  Don’t touch your eyes.”

Sandor recoiled from her, pressing his bulk against the berth and scrabbling at his waist for his blades.

“Who the fuck are you?  The fuck have you done to me?”

“It’s me.  It’s Arya.”

He cocked his head, listening more carefully.  “Arya?”

“Give me your hand.”

Warily, Sandor reached out his left hand.  She patiently guided it towards her face and allowed his blunt fingers to travel the contours of her features.  She’d learned the hard way that nothing she could say would convince his drug-muddled mind of who she was.  The only way to convince Sandor of her identity was to let him touch her face.  When he was satisfied that it was her, he sagged back into the bunk.

“Is there something to drink?”

Arya smirked as she pressed a cup of musty water into his hands.  His lips twisted with distaste when he brought it to his nose and sniffed it, but he condescended to drink.

“No ale?”

“There’s plenty of ale, but I’m not giving you any.  You’re in no fit state for it.”

Sandor snorted contemptuously, but drained his cup and held it out for more.  While she refilled it, he asked, “Where are we?”

“On a ship.”

“I’ve not got shit for brains, girl.  I can feel we’re on a ship.  Where are we going?”

Arya pressed the cup into his hand.  “West of Westeros.  We’re a few days out from the Arbor, and perhaps a week or so from Arkonet.”

Sandor’s brows lowered.  “I’ve never heard of Arkonet.”

Arya smiled.  She took his empty cup and pressed a piece of biscuit into his hand.  “No one has heard of Arkonet.  Most maps don’t even show it, it’s so small, but it’s the westernmost point in all of Westeros.  We will put in there and try to pick up a pilot and a cartographer and any other last minute supplies we can.”

“And after Arkonet?”

“We will sail on to whatever is west of Westeros.”

Around a mouthful of biscuit, he answered, “That’s madness.  There’s nothing west of Westeros.  Everyone knows that.  Who the fuck would finance that kind of shit venture?  Whose ship is this?”

“Mine.  Bran had a swan ship modified and outfitted for me in King’s Landing.  He said . . .” Arya paused, trying to recall Bran’s words precisely.  “Well, he wished me a safe voyage and said that when I returned, he’d be there to meet me.  I told him I’d never return to Winteros, but he said I’m still part of the pack.”

Sandor ate in silence, Arya occasionally pressing a piece of salt pork, a shriveled apple, or more biscuit into his hand.  Finally, he plucked up the courage to ask, “I’m blind then?”

Arya had waited out his silence skimming through the ship’s log.  She marked her place and laid it aside. 

“I don’t know.  When I was in the House of Black and White, they gave me a poison that took away my sight.  It took a while before I was able to see properly afterwards.  There was an ointment they smeared in my eyes at night to help them heal, and I’ve used the same on you.  I don’t know if you’ll see when I take off the bandages.”  She paused, unsure if she wanted to ask the obvious question.  “It was the Mountain that tried to put your eyes out?”

“Aye.”  His tone was flat, resigned.

Arya shifted nervously in her seat.  “Is he dead then?”

“Still worried about your little list?  Aye, he’s good and dead, just like I ought to be.  I put a knife through his eye and straight out the back of his skull, and still he didn’t die.  I pushed him, and we fell from that tower for an age.  No one could have survived that.”  He paused, turning a piece of biscuit over between his fingers.  “His face was the last thing I saw of this world.”

There was a soft knock at the door of the captain’s day cabin.  “Well, I’m not much to look at, but with any luck, I’ll likely be the next.”  She rose and took his hands, guiding them to the various items she’d laid out on the table beside him.  “There’s a jug of water here—“

“I’d prefer ale.”

Arya snorted.  “I’m sure you would, but until you’re back on your feet, it’ll be water for now.  You’re enough of a pain in my ass when you’re sober, little lone when you’ve got a flagon or two of ale in you.  There’s food too.  I’ve things to attend to aboard the ship.  Try to get some rest.  We will see to your eyes later.”

* * *

By the time Arya returned to the night cabin, Sandor was seething.

“Took your time about it,” he growled.

She set a bowl of stew and a single candle on the table and sat down on the chair opposite him. 

For weeks, Arya’s existence had been spent overseeing the crew on her ship, tending Sandor’s significant injuries, and ensuring that his breathing didn’t stop after each dose of sweetsleep.  More than once she’d asked herself why in all the seven hells she’d followed that damned raven into the Maegar’s Holdfast.  On the nights she’d sat beside Sandor tending inhumanly high fevers, she wondered why she’d drug him all the way out of the Red Keep only to die again.  On the few occasions she’d accidentally overdosed him on sweetsleep and Sandor had had to fight for each rattling breath, she’d remembered the words of the prayers to the old gods that Eddard Stark had taught her.  While she had been screaming obscenities at the Many Faced God, she’d never considered what the price would be to have a face relinquished to her keeping. 

Arya glared at him, though it was barely worth the effort since he couldn’t see her.  “I’m starting to remember why I kept you drugged.”

“It wasn’t my fucking idea to have your god send me back from the dead.”

Arya snorted in amusement.  “I was hoping he wouldn’t send your foul temper back with the rest of you.  Let’s see if he sent your sight back as well.”

Arya’s fingers trembled as she unwrapped his head.  When the long strip of linen had been laid aside, she hesitated, holding the folds of gauze over his eyes.

Roughly, he murmured, “Go on, girl.  If I’m going to be in the dark the rest of my life, I might as well get on with it.”

“Sandor . . .”  Arya cleared her suddenly dry throat.  “I did everything—“

His voice softened.  “I know you did.  None of this was your fault, and I’m not blaming you.”  He reached out clumsily for Arya’s face, brushing her cheek with his fingertips before clasping her behind the neck.  “Aye?”

Arya peeled the gauze away, still sticky with ointment.  “Don’t open your eyes yet.  Let me try to wipe some of this away first.”

Sandor grimaced as she scrubbed at his eyelids with a cloth and water.  “Does that hurt?”

He grunted softly, “Aye, a bit.”

Arya patted his face dry, stalling as long as she could.  “Alright, open them.”

Sandor cracked his eyes and winced in pain.  “Fucking hell!  What time is it?”

She sighed with relief.  “It’s late.  I made you wait several hours past sunset.  I’ve only got a single candle burning, but it hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

“Aye.  I can’t hardly bear to look at it.”

Arya slumped back in her chair, her limbs suddenly limp and heavy.  “You haven’t used your eyes for months, but at least you can see something.  It will take some time before you can tolerate much light, and it may be a while before your vision clears up.  In the meantime . . .” Arya caught one of Sandor’s hands and guided the bowl into it.  “Eat.”

While Sandor fumbled his way through the meal, Arya laid her pallet out on the floor of the cabin.  As owner of the ship, she’d displaced the captain from his quarters.  Though the night cabin was nearly as large as the day cabin, there was only a single bunk anchored to the wall in addition to a low-backed wooden chair and a table.  With Sandor ensconced in the bunk, she’d become accustomed to the floor.

Sandor squinted at her.  “The fuck are you doing, girl?”

“Getting ready to sleep.  I’m on duty on the next watch.  There’s too few of us—“

He set the bowl aside and started edging to the side of the bunk.

Alarmed, Arya asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting out of your bunk.”

Arya pushed him back down.  “Like hell you are.  I’ve spent weeks sewing your sorry ass back together and pouring every vile medicament I’ve got down your gullet.  I’m not going to see those bones rebroken or you puking up blood again just so that I can sleep on a smelly straw tick for a night.”

“You’re supposed to be a fucking lady—“

Arya snorted.  “Your honor resurfaces at the oddest of times.  Eat your supper and shut up.  You’re keeping me awake.”

Sandor mumbled angrily into his bowl, but stayed put.  Satisfied that for once he’d do as she’d told him, Arya stretched out on the pallet, exhausted but feeling lighter than she had for a long time. 

She’d nearly slipped into sleep when Sandor murmured, “How bad was it?”

“Bad.  As bad as it gets.  Sam Tarley worked on you without rest for nearly two days.  The broken bones—fingers, ribs, arm, leg—they weren’t so bad.  It’s a miracle your back and neck weren’t broken, but your skull was cracked pretty badly in a couple of places.  We set the bones right off, and I stitched up the worst of the rest while Sam worked on the burns—“

“Burns?”

Arya cursed herself silently.  She hadn’t meant to mention the burns, and the fear radiating from Sandor was palpable.  “They were mostly superficial.  Whatever happened to your innards before and after you fell was the real problem.  We couldn’t get you to stop vomiting blood, and you fought us any time you were awake.  We decided it was best to drug you and keep you asleep as much as we could.  When he was done . . .”  She paused, remembering the young maester’s creased brow, and how he’d stuttered out his apologies.  “Sam Tarley said you’d never wake.  He said your injuries were too severe.”

The bowl clattered on the table as Sandor set it down, and the bunk creaked ominously as he repositioned himself to lay back down.  The cradle board around his broken leg thunked hollowly against the wall of the night cabin and Sandor cursed softly.

“Sounds like your god is shit at raising the dead.”

Arya snorted.  “Better the Many Faced God than the Night King.”

“Aye.  Better than the Night King.”

“There’s always a price to pay when you treat with the gods.  Be grateful it wasn’t higher.”


	4. Scars and Debts

Arya returned from her watch to the sounds of scraping furniture and the gods knew what falling onto the floor of the night cabin.  She strode across the day cabin and wrenched open the door to find the table overturned, bandages unrolling across the floor amidst her bottles of medicaments, and one very angry warrior spitting in rage.

“Seven bloody fucking hells!  What do you think you’re doing?”

Sandor gave her the filthiest glare he could manage while squinting at her in the early morning haze.  He was standing on his sound leg, both arms braced against the bulkhead of the cabin, the back of his head pressed against the ceiling.  “I’m trying to get to the head to take a piss for fuck’s sake, but this contraption you’ve got strapped to my foot makes it damn near impossible!”

“You’re not meant to move, you stupid shit!  You already damn near died of infection a dozen times.  That leg breaks again and infection sets in, it’ll probably have to come off.”

This brought him up short.  His jaw worked as though he was actually chewing his tongue as he surveyed Arya.

“Aye?”  he shot back.  “And what am I supposed to do in the mean time?  Lie here until I fucking die?  What was the point of hauling me out of the Red Keep just to be a fucking invalid?”

“You won’t be an invalid if you just sit your ass down until you heal!  For fuck’s sake, Sandor, how did Ray manage it when you broke your leg before?”

Shamefaced, Sandor looked away from her.  “I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean, you don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember because he kept me in a drunken stupor most of the time until it was healed enough to try standing on it.  And then he took away the ale.”

Arya took a deep breath and tried to force down her anger.  “You’re going to have to let me help you while longer.  Just a few more weeks, and we can try it without the—“

“A few weeks?  For fuck’s sake!  I’m not laying around for a few more weeks while you tend me like a swaddling babe.  I can take care of myself!”

Sandor heaved the wooden cradle she’d built around his heel and leg off the floor and slammed it down on the decking in an attempt to take a step towards the door.  The effect was immediate.  Color drained from his face and he swayed on the spot.  The rocking of the ship made it impossible to keep his balance, and he teetered precariously.  Arya launched herself at Sandor and strained to guide his crushing bulk back into the bunk without landing on his nearly healed ribs.

Grateful the bunk didn’t tear clean off the wall when he collapsed into it, Arya shoved him back. 

They glared, panting, at one another for several minutes before Arya growled between clenched teeth, “Enough!  Either let me tend you, or I’ll dose you again with sweetsleep and then you really will be an invalid.”

“You woudn’t.”

“To save your miserable life, I would.”  Arya stood and surveyed Sandor as he struggled to pull himself back to a seated position.  “If you weren’t so damn stubborn, you’d have realized there was a chamber pot beneath the bunk.”

Sandor colored richly.  He glanced over the edge where the chipped crockery was plainly visible. 

“How did I manage when you kept me drugged with the sweetsleep?”

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “With difficulty.”

His flush deepened and he glared at the floor.  “Stupid fucking bitch.  You should have left me to die in King’s Landing just like you did in the Vale.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t.  You’re too close to being whole to throw it away now.”  Arya was struggling to keep her temper in check.  She knelt by his knee and looked up into his thunderous face, though he refused to meet her eye.  “I know it’s hard—“

“How the fuck would you know?” he growled.

Arya stood and jerked up the hem of her tunic and tore down the waist of her breeches revealing the scars crisscrossing her belly and abdomen from the waif’s attack.  “Look.”  When he refused to raise his head, she screamed, “Look at me, you miserable shit!”

When he raised his head and caught sight of her bared skin, the rage drained away as his eyes traced the path of the twisted ridges of flesh.

“Someone took care of me after this.  I couldn’t sit.  I couldn’t stand.  I couldn’t walk.  When I wasn’t vomiting blood, I was pissing it out.  When I could finally eat, it took days before my bowels could hold it in, and more than once I woke up in a pool of my own shit.  She washed me, fed me, stitched up my wounds, and took care of me until I could do it myself . . . just like I did for you.”  Sandor glared at her, and Arya softened her voice.  “I’d have died otherwise, and where would the rest of Westeros be now if I had?”

Sandor traced the paths of the worst of the scarring.

“Who did this to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Aye, it does.”  He swiped his thumb gently over her skin and then solemnly pulled her shirt down to cover her.  “One day, I’m going to gut them like a fish and strangle them with their own entrails.”

Arya smirked down at him.  “Well, you can’t.  I already killed the bitch back in Braavos.

“You cared for me and kept me safe when the Cersei wanted my head on a pike.  I’d have died without you more times than I can count, and you taught me everything I needed to know to survive.  I’ll care for you now, if you’ll let me.  Think of it as a debt repaid.”

“It’s not right a girl like you ought to have to waste her life on a mutt like me.”

Arya squeezed his shoulder.  “I haven’t been a girl for a long time.  The number of men we’ve killed together, you ought to know that better than anyone.” 

She wrinkled her nose.  “You stink.  There’s a couple of clean shirts in that crate.  If you want to pull yourself together, I’ll go see what I can do about finding some kind of walking staff.  Together, we should be able to get you out on the deck so you can at least get some fresh air.”

Arya turned to go, but Sandor caught her fingers.  He didn’t look at her when he murmured softly, “Thank you.”

* * *

After consulting with the ship’s carpenter, Arya returned with thin strips of wood that she was able to use to re-splint Sandor’s leg to make it easier for him to maneuver around the ship.  Arya wrapped Sandor’s eyes with a strip of loosely-woven dark cloth to blot out most of the light.  With one hand on her shoulder and leaning on a split oar, Arya led him out onto the deck.  She explained the basic layout of the main deck of the ship and left him seated on a crate near the bow.

“Milady!” 

Arya turned her head toward the captain, a good-natured man named Wellyn whose people came from Bear Island.  Nodding her acknowledgement, she asked Sandor, “I’ve things that need tending to.  You’ll be fine here?”

“Aye.  I’ll find my way.”

Arya joined Wellyn on the quarterdeck, and he nodded in Sandor’s direction, now edging and feeling his way along the bow.

“I have to admit, milady, I didn’t think it could be done.  That ‘un looked like he was already wrapped tight in the Stranger’s cloak when you brought him on board, but now he looks like he might yet survive.”  He raised his brows.  “Just what do you intend to do with a blind bugger about as big as an ox on my boat?”

Arya shot him a sharp glance.  “My boat.”

“Aye, if it pleases milady.”

She sighed.  Gods be damned, what was she going to do with him?

“How many days are we out of Arkonet?”

Wellyn took a deep breath of sea air, as though he could taste the distance yet to be crossed.  “If this weather holds out, six days.  If that storm hits us,” he pointed at his chin at a rolling darkness gathering low on the horizon, “seven, maybe eight.  Why?”

“He’s not the sort of man to sit meekly by while others work.”

“Aye, I can see that.”

“Hopefully by the time we reach Arkonet, we will have a better idea of the state of his vision.  I guess he’ll have to make the same decision everyone else does.”  She glanced west, always west.  “Will he stay with us, or will he go back to Westeros?”

 


	5. Three Bells

Though he was chomping at the bit to be rid of the blindfold, Arya insisted Sandor wear it throughout the day until his eyes became reaccustomed to light.  By the fourth day, he could tolerate the daylight well enough to spend most of the afternoon on the deck and claimed he could see her clear enough.  Being able to make his way around the ship on his own had also gone a long way towards calming Sandor’s temper. 

In an effort to keep him off the broken leg and occupied, Arya had asked the bosun to teach Sandor to mend ropes and nets. 

Turning a fid over in his hands distastefully, Sandor mumbled something about ‘woman’s work’.

“What’s that?”  Kurren, the ship’s bosun, spat angrily.

Arya glanced uneasily between the two men.  Sandor was swelling with resentment, and she could see the bosun’s color crawling up his neck.  Although she was almost of a mind to leave them to it, she wasn’t resigned to losing her bosun quite yet.

“Kurren’s got enough to do with keeping the ship in good working order and training the new bosun’s mate.  There’s little you can do with a broken leg on a ship.  You can either help tend rope, or maybe the cook can use some help in the galley.”

When Sandor shot Arya a glare, she lifted her bow imperiously, her hands folded placidly behind her back.

“Aye, alright then.  Show me the knots again.”

Arya walked away, but couldn’t resist throwing a last smirk over her shoulder.  Sandor caught her eye and gave her a curt nod.  He didn’t like it, but he conceded he needed to do something besides glower and take up space.  Arya returned the nod, grateful for the nonverbal shorthand that had developed between them, crucial in a fight, and dead useful the rest of the time. 

Through two watches, Sandor sat splicing ropes and mending lines.  Feeling he’d done quite enough for now, she picked up a pair of staves from the carpenter and crossed the deck to Sandor.  Though he didn’t look up from his work, she was certain that the strike of her heels against the deck was more than adequate to announce her presence.  Arya flung one of the staves at Sandor’s head, and unerringly, he snatched it from the air without glancing up.

He lifted his head slowly.  “Bigger men than you have found themselves run through for less.”

Arya smirked and offered him a low Braavosi bow.  “At least I know I came to the right place to pick a fight.  Let’s see how well I’ve done my work.”

She knew it was a risk, knew she might be testing the limits of his newly knit bones, but it was a wager she was willing to make today.  He’d been inactive for far too long, and if their past was anything to judge by, they wouldn’t be long on land before they had to start living by their blades again.

Sandor laid aside the coil of rope and stood.  He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck, and swung his arms in an attempt to loosen muscles that hadn’t handled a blade since King’s Landing.

“You going to go easy on me since I’m a cripple?”

Arya smiled broadly at him.  “You going to go easy on me since I’m a woman?”

A broad grin was his only answer before Sandor lunged at her.

All around them, feet clattered across the deck amid cries of “Milady!”, but Arya paid them no heed.  The same length of stave served as a greatsword for Sandor and a staff for Arya, though she spent most of her time ducking and swirling out of the way of Sandor’s strikes.  On the rare occasion she did engage with his weapon, it was primarily to guide it past the intended target.

At first, Sandor had been stiff, his movements slow and predictable.  Arya knew his leg was likely hurting on top of the awkwardness of the splint.  As his muscles warmed up, Sandor seemed to forget the pain and his blows became faster, more fluid, and harder, which Arya learned to her cost when he scooped her off her feet with a well-placed blow to her knee.

She slammed to the deck and rolled away before Sandor’s stave came crashing down on the deck where her head had been a split second earlier.  She sprang to her feet and grinned up at him.  She received a nasty grimace in return and laughed.

“You’re faster than you used to be,” he panted, “but you still nonce around just the same.”

“You’re slower, but you could still smash a man’s skull in with a single blow.”

Sandor snorted and ducked a block and tackle Arya hurled at him as a distraction.  “Aye, if I had to.”  He gave her a wary glare as she paused, one foot on the lowest tread of the stair leading up to the quarter deck.  “I’d have to catch him first.”

Arya bowed low, flourishing her stave so that the end snapped up against her shoulder blades.  Her intention had only been to get him up and moving and provide herself with a bit of entertainment and exercise.  The last thing she wanted was to overtax his leg.  She knew as well as he did that if she gave chase, he’d make a credible effort at catching her.  The splint wouldn’t make the slightest difference if he’d set his mind to it, and he’d likely re-break the bone.

She scooped a ladle of water from a barrel on the deck, drained it, and refilled it for Sandor.  Using the stave to hobble closer, he nodded his thanks and took the ladle.

“How does it feel?”

Sandor squinted out towards the horizon off the bow.  “It’s fine.”

Sandor was standing on the sound leg, resting only the toe of his boot on the broken leg on the deck.  She knew it wasn’t fine, but it didn’t hurt enough that he’d crow about it.

“Again tomorrow?”

He glanced down at her, his eyes brighter than she’d seen them since he’d woken on the ship.  “Aye.”  He nodded with satisfaction.  “Tomorrow.”

* * *

That night, Sandor watched her arranging her pallet on the floor with an increasingly sour expression.

“I’ll gladly take the floor or hammock with the crew.”

Arya shrugged.  “There’s no need, truly.  I doubt the bunk is much more comfortable.”

“Suit yourself.”

Once they’d settled into the tense, crowded dark, populated by the rasp of their breaths and the sea lapping against the hull, Sandor fell quickly into a fitful sleep.  Arya watched the moonlight reflecting off the water as it danced across the ceiling of the cabin for what seemed like hours. 

For weeks, she’d been having the same circular discussions with herself, trying to calculate how much to purchase to put in their holds.  How much would fit?  How much water, how much biscuit, how much salt pork . . . and just how long could they sail before rations ran short and they had to turn back.

Arya grimaced and rolled onto her belly.  She didn’t want to turn back.  She was both enchanted and annoyed that no matter who she asked, no one ever seemed able to give her an adequate answer as to what lay west of Westeros.  Was the world truly so big that no one had attempted it?  She’d heard the rumors that Elissa Farman’s _Sun Chaser_ had made it all the way across the Sunset Sea to Asshai, but that had been generations ago and could as well have been just a fanciful end to a good tale as fact.  By the Seven, what a disappointment that would be, to go all that way just to end up in Essos. 

Still, she had to consider the lives of the men who sailed under the Stark banner.  These were still Northmen, still her people, and she was responsible for them.  However much it might rankle, she knew she would turn back if necessary for their sake.

“Mmpfh.”

On the bunk above her, Sandor shifted in his sleep, banging against the wall of the night cabin.  Since emerging from the sweetsleep, he seemed to be having an unusual number of nightmares.  She had become accustomed to him thrashing and mumbling in his sleep, and she ignored it for the most part.

Arya rolled onto her back considering.  It was a wonder any of them got a good night’s sleep the number of battles they’d been in.  The dead in her own past kept her awake often enough and visited her in her dreams.  After his years of soldiering and service under the Lannisters, Arya couldn’t imagine the horrors that haunted Sandor’s dreams.

“No!”

Sandor’s foot slammed against the bunk, and Arya grimaced in sympathy.  If he kept on like this, he could do some real damage to himself without intending it.

Arya rose to her knees beside the bunk, narrowly dodging one of Sandor’s fists as he struck out against the phantoms in his dreams.

“Sandor . . .” 

She hesitated to prod him to wake him, not certain of how he would react.  He kicked out against the wall once again with the splinted foot.  Arya sighed in resignation.

“Sandor!”

“Arya?”

Arya braved approaching the bunk again, and her fingers found his in the trembling blue light reflecting from the tiny windows in the cabin.  Sandor drew her to him, and she could see by the unfocused way his eyes travelled over her face, he still had a foot in his dream and saw her only indistinctly.

Sandor reached out a hand and cupped the back of her head.

“Don’t worry.  I’ll get you home.  On my honor, I’ll carry you myself on foot if I have to.”

Arya smiled indulgently down at him.  “We made it back to Winterfell already, you and I, remember?  We left.  We’re a long way from home now.”

“It doesn’t matter.”  Sandor pulled her and pressed her head against his shoulder.  She braced herself against the edge of the bunk and the wall and only narrowly avoided falling.  Oblivious, he clumsily stroked her hair and patted her back before closing his arms around Arya’s contorted form.  “I’ll look after you.  One way or another, I’ll see you home safe.”

In another moment, Sandor had fallen back asleep and was snoring softly.

Arya waited a few minutes to be sure he was asleep and tried to extricate herself.  To her dismay, he had a secure hold on her that she couldn’t wriggle out of without waking him.  Pressing her eyes shut in deepest annoyance, Arya carefully shifted within his grasp, inching her way onto the bunk beside him.  Perhaps responding unconsciously to her movements, Sandor turned on his side and pulled Arya tightly against his chest.  Without waking him, there was now no chance whatever of returning to the floor.

Arya sighed again, equally amused and annoyed at her predicament.  It wasn’t the first time she’d slept next to Sandor Clegane, and probably would not be the last.  The gods knew she’d slept in worse places.  Grudgingly, she had to admit the bunk was significantly more comfortable than the floor, even if it had the extreme inconvenience of being mostly filled by an overlarge Westerman.

Eventually, Arya wriggled her way into a comfortable spot on the edge of the bunk with her head pillowed on Sandor’s arm.  The warmth of him at her back was making her somnolent, and she yawned broadly.  Knowing that in the morning, there’d be no end to the jeering, she closed her eyes.

Her last thought was a slightly disgruntled, “Seven hells . . .”

* * *

Arya woke well rested in the morning but with a dull ache in her neck.  While she slept, she’d turned and her head now rested on Sandor’s shoulder.  She was reluctant to admit it to herself, but in spite of the cramped space she occupied, she wasn’t uncomfortable.  Quite aside from the softness of the straw tick on the bunk, she found her proximity to the man beside her to be a surprising comfort in itself.

Though she’d never admit it to him, Sandor Clegane had been the one steady companion she’d had in her brief life.  He was cantankerous and brusque, but he was loyal to the grave and one of the finest warriors in Westeros.  He also adhered to a rigid code of honor that forbade him from laying a hand against her or rape.  While that code might be difficult for those who didn’t know him to understand, more often than not, his sense of honor matched her own.  He was the only man outside her own family, in fact, she trusted enough to sleep in his presence.

Under his thick hide, coarse manners, and façade of aggression, Sandor also had a wicked sense of humor that she would likely be the subject of in the morning.  After offering her the bunk for days, she’d be damned in the lowest of the seven hells before she admitted she’d prefer sharing it with him to the hard, musty floor.  With luck, she might be able to slip back onto the floor at and avoid his jibes altogether .

She had sent a questing foot out along the floor, seeking purchase, when he asked, clearly amused, “I suppose you decided the bunk was softer after all, aye?”

Arya froze and answered warily, “Something like that.”

Sandor shifted back onto his side to better accommodate her.  He didn’t release her exactly, but he relaxed his grip somewhat.  “Aye, well, I tried to tell you as much.  There’s three bells yet to the end of the watch.  Go back to sleep.”

Arya huffed in amusement and shifted until she found a better position in the limited space afforded her.  Sheepishly, she adjusted her head on his arm to ease the pinch in her neck, and when she finally stopped squirming, he sleepily patted the top of her head.  Within moments, they had both sunk back into sleep, and neither Arya nor Sandor were tormented by nightmares for the remainder of the watch.


	6. The Prophet and the Warrior

 When Sandor woke again, Arya had gone, no doubt to attend whatever duty she had accepted for the morning.  He’d thought he was dreaming at first, waking to find her pressed against his side in the night.  He had no memory whatever of Arya joining him, but couldn’t say he minded overmuch. 

He counted Arya Stark amongst only a very few he trusted; she was amongst the even fewer that he genuinely liked.  After years of service to the worthless, conniving, hateful Lannisters, he wondered how he found himself so securely tied to a Stark.  Even though Arya had left him for dead, she was still the closest thing he had to a friend.  Barely a day had passed after waking in the Vale when he hadn’t wondered after her, hoping she was alright.  It was a relief, somehow, that she was close and he could keep an eye on her to make sure she came to no harm.

_You’re bound to that girl, whether you like it or not.  Mark my words, the Lord of Light has laid out your path, and barely an inch of it deviates from hers._

Sandor snorted.  Fucking fire worshipers.  For all his mumbling over his fire god, by the end, Sandor had to concede he’d counted Beric Dondarrion amongst his few friends as well. Beric . . . Thoughtfully, Sandor turned the conversation they’d had the night before the Battle of Winterfell over in his mind.

* * *

 They watched Arya’s back retreating down the battlements in silence.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Sandor shrugged irritably.  “Nothing to interrupt.”

He’d been surprised but pleased Arya had finally come to find him.  It had been a weight lifted off his chest when Brienne had told him that Arya had made it back to Winterfell safely.  It had lightened his heart still more to see her within the walls of Winterfell on the day he’d ridden into the courtyard with Jon Snow.  After his arrival, Sandor and Arya had eyed one another warily across the courtyard and great hall, and she’d deigned to dine with him several times, but they’d spoken little.  He’d have liked to have had more time to speak with her.  There were things between them he’d have liked to have settled before the Stranger claimed them.

Beric accepted Sandor’s proffered wine skin and studied him.  “She means something to you, that one, whether you’ll admit it or not.”

Sandor snorted derisively.  “Vicious little bitch left me for dead in the Vale and took my purse in the bargain.”

“You don’t hold that against her, though, I’ll warrant.”  Beric smirked and continued shrewdly, “If anything, I imagine it elevated her significantly in your estimation.”

Sandor accepted the wine skin back and took a long draught.  He didn’t hold it against her.  When Brienne told him that Arya had become a more than able killer, he’d been pleased and not a little proud.  Maybe she’d been listening all that time after all.

Smirking to himself, he answered, “Well, she was welcome to the purse.  I’d stolen it anyway.  If I couldn’t see her safe back home, at least it could provide her some small comfort.”

“She’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t she?”  Sandor looked up sharply at Beric but didn’t contradict him.  “You don’t fight for the living or Jon Snow.  You came here to see that she made it back alive.”

“What of it if I did?”

“We all have a destiny in this life.” 

Sandor rolled his eyes.  “Enough with the Lord of Light shit.  I looked into your fire and saw something, aye—“

Beric leaned closer.  “I know what you saw in the flames, and I know that you saw more than just a mountain and a wight.  Your purpose in this life isn’t done.”  He regarded Sandor solemnly.  “You’re bound to that girl, whether you like it or not.  Mark my words, the Lord of Light has laid out your path, and barely an inch of it deviates from hers.”

Sandor snorted.  “Tell her that.  Arya Stark goes where she damn well pleases, does what she damn well pleases.  I’d like to see the man that can stand in her way.  She’ll carve his liver out and cut it into bite-sized pieces.”

Beric pulled his coat closer around his throat and looked out over the crenellated wall into the swirling snow and dark.  “My purpose here is nearly served.  The Lord of Light won’t let me continue on much longer now he’s taken Thoros.  I miss him.  He was a good friend.”  Beric stepped closer to Sandor and looked down at him gravely.  “Stay close to her.  She needs you, whether she knows it or not, and you need her.  It’s not right for a man to be alone in the world.”

Beric had stalked off, and eventually Sandor had fallen asleep against the wall, waiting out whatever would come when the battle finally began.  He woke hours later with a small, warm weight pressed against his side.  Glancing down, he found Arya Stark nestled against him, asleep and clutching her Valyrian dagger in one hand and his wine skin in the other.

* * *

When Sandor stumped out to the main deck, Arya was waiting for him beside his pile of rope, several pieces of biscuit in her hand.  Her expression was tense, and she met his eye only for a moment before glancing out to sea.

“How’s the leg this morning?”

Sandor accepted the biscuit and bit into it with a grimace of distaste.  “I’ll bide.  You planning on making another effort at bludgeoning me this evening?”

Arya grinned warmly.  “I thought I might.”

Sandor grunted assent and took another bite of biscuit.  “Something you’re wanting to say to me, girl?”

“About last night . . . I didn’t mean to—“

He glanced at her, one brow cocked.  “You’re welcome to share the damned bunk.  It’s got to be more comfortable than the floor.”

Arya nodded curtly and looked back out to sea.  An expectant silence stretched between them, and Arya remained at his side, uncharacteristically still.

“If you’re worried . . .” Arya shot him a narrow glance.  Sandor grimaced and laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.  Quietly, he growled, “I’ll not touch you, if that’s what you’re worrying on.  I’d give myself over to the Stranger before I’d see you harmed.  You ought to know that by—“

“I do know it.”  She clasped his forearm.  “I do.  You’re the only man I’d trust at my back.”  She glanced back out at the waves.  “There’s not much I wouldn’t do to keep you there.”

Sandor squeezed her shoulder and let his hand fall.  “Aye, well, short of the Stranger dragging me away, I imagine that’s where I’ll be for the time being.  So long as you don’t take off too damned fast.”

Arya grinned up at him.  “You’ll be whole again soon.  In the meantime, see what you can do with the rest of these lines.”


	7. Landfall

“That’s it then?”

Arya had stood at the bow for several hours since landfall had been spotted, checking their progress through her spyglass.  Sandor stood behind her, one hand braced on the bow rail.  She handed him the spyglass over her shoulder.

“See for yourself.”

She watched him anxiously as he squinted into the glass.  “I took it for granted you’d want to come with me.  I never asked.  Do you?”

“Do I what?”

Arya glared up at Sandor in annoyance.  “Arkonet is the last scrap of land that you can set foot on and still say you’re in Westeros.  I plan to sail west of Westeros.”  Her stomach twisted painfully.  “Will you continue on with me?”

Sandor lowered the spyglass from his eye slowly.  “I’m already with you, aren’t I?”  He brought his brows down, bemused.  “It’s a bit late on to be asking now.”

Sandor offered Arya the spyglass and she turned it over in her hands.  “You don’t have to be, if that’s not what you want.” 

Arya traced a long scratch on the casing of the spyglass so that she didn’t have to meet his eye.  In the past few days, something subtle had altered between them.  It wasn’t really in his demeanor.  He was still as dour and sarcastic as ever, still restless at being pent up on the boat, and still attacked her just as ferociously when they sparred.  When he spoke to her though, the pitch and timbre of his voice was different, softer perhaps. 

Whenever Arya’s duties took her to the main deck, her eye sought Sandor out involuntarily.  She’d begun to look forward to the watches when they would share a meal together, anticipating his company, even if half the time he said little more than to ask her to pass the ale.  Arya didn’t want to believe the change between them had anything to do with the fact that every night she now laid down beside Sandor, more often than not with her head upon his shoulder and his arms around her.  She certainly didn’t want to admit she craved the comfort his strength and stability provided.  It was so . . . female.  She could practically hear Sansa roaring with laughter all the way from Winterfell.  Arya fervently thanked the old gods and the new that Sansa couldn’t see her now.

Strong fingers lifted her chin.  Sandor cocked his head and studied her with obvious concern.  “I’m here, aye?”

Arya rallied with a deep breath and a nod.  Briskly, she answered, “I’m grateful for it, but I don’t want you to feel as though you have to stay if you don’t want to.  It will mean at least a couple of months pent up on a boat and precious little to do.  The entire crew is assembling on the main deck at the first dog watch, and I’m addressing them then.”  She searched his eyes.  “We’ll likely stay in Arkonet for a few days laying in last minute provisions.  I’m going to ask the crew to let me know if they will continue west before they go ashore, but . . .” Arya’s eyes fell to the spyglass she’d been turning over nervously between her fingers.  “I understand if you need more time.”  Arya strode away from the bow.  She glanced over her shoulder and gave Sandor a tight smile.  “Take all the time you need.”

“Arya . . . ?”

Arya closed the day cabin’s door, locked it, and sat down with her spine pressed against it for good measure.  Her heart was racing and tears were prickling at her eyes.  Angrily, Arya scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.  Seven hells, why had that been so hard?  She’d travelled halfway around the world on her own.  She could just as easily go the rest of the way by herself.  What difference should it make if he went with her?

Arya picked herself up off the floor and sat down at her desk, locking away anything she didn’t want to be disturbed while they were ashore.  By the time the bell sounded ending the watch, she’d tidied the office, leaving only the manifest, a quill, and a pot of ink atop the desk.  Arya took a deep breath and unlocked the door.

As she strode across the deck, Arya locked eyes with Sandor, a fid in one hand and a coil of rope in the other.  His brows were drawn together as though puzzled, but she tore her gaze away before he could offer any other acknowledgement.

Arya mounted the stairs to the quarter deck, and waited patiently for the entire crew to assemble.  The captain caught her eye and nodded, indicating he’d counted and the entire crew had assembled.

“I know most of you have served the North and House Stark all your lives.  Every one of you followed Jon Snow to King’s Landing to fight in his war.  I am honored and humbled you would come all the way to the very edge of Westeros with me.”

Arya was gratified to see several of the men below her nodding their assent.  She smiled and continued, “As many of you know, this is a voyage of exploration.  All my life, I’ve wondered what lies west of Westeros.  It is my plan to sail west from Arkonet to try to find out.  Wellyn assures me that we can lay three months of supplies into our holds.  Barring any impediment, we will voyage west for five  weeks in hopes of finding landfall.”  A soft rumble of discontent rippled through the seamen, but Arya continued, “I pledge to you that if we are not successful, we will return by the same route, and you will receive your full wages. 

“We should make landfall in the morning.  I expect every man on board this ship to present himself in my cabin by the end of the first watch to let me know if he will be continuing with us past Arkonet.  You will receive your wage for the first leg of the journey at that time.  Any man wishing to leave my service will be discharged without prejudice,” Arya couldn’t keep her eyes from seeking out Sandor, “I will gladly wish you seven blessings and a safe voyage home.”

* * *

Promptly on the eighth bell of the first watch, Sandor appeared in the doorway of the day cabin.  Arya looked up from the amended manifest, her head in her hand and her head pounding.  Sandor set a cup of ale on her desk.

“Well?  Still have a crew then?”

Arya took a long, grateful draught of the ale.  “Near enough.  There are a few key positions Wellyn will need to fill in Arkonet, but he’s optimistic it can be done.”  She set the cup down on the desk and traced its rim idly.  “And what of you?  Have you decided if you will go east or west?”

Sandor gave her a disgusted look.  “I thought I gave you my answer clear enough this morning.  If you want me gone, say so.”

He turned and limped into the night cabin.  For a second, Arya sat at the desk, shocked at his vehemence.  She drained her cup and followed him.

By the time she reached the night cabin, Sandor had already thrown his boots into a corner and laid down on the bunk with his back against the bulkhead.  Arya toed out of her boots and tossed them aside with his.  He eyed her venomously, arms crossed.  Arya glared back.

After a few minutes of molten silence, Arya lifted a brow.  “Well?”

Grudgingly, Sandor uncrossed his arms and opened them for her.  The bunk creaked below her as she laid down beside him on her belly.  She propped herself on her elbows so she could look at him properly.

“I never said I wanted you gone.”

Sandor’s breath hissed through his nose as he made a visible effort to calm his temper.  “Aye?  Then why the fuck do you keep asking the same question?”

Arya’s jaw hung slack as realization dawned.  He didn’t want to leave any more than she wanted him to go.  She sighed with relief.

“You spent most of your life serving the Lannisters.”  She lifted her brows and looked down at her folded hands.  “I can’t imagine the kinds of things they made you do.  You’re not my vassal.  You don’t owe me anything.  You’re not obligated to come with me.”  Arya met Sandor’s gaze, and some of the ferocity had drained from his expression.  “If you come . . . I want you to come because that’s what you want, and not because you feel compelled.”

Sandor sat up, his elbow braced on the knee of his unbroken leg.  “Aye, I spent the better part of my life serving the fucking Lannisters, not because it was what I wanted, but because it was what I was bound to do.  I was born on Lannister lands in a Lannister keep, and they owned every breath I drew.  I can’t remember the last time someone asked me what I wanted.

“I’ve no family, no lands, no income.”  He snorted in wry amusement.  “Rescinding the Clegane holdings was one of your father’s few official acts when he sat the Iron Throne in King Robert’s stead.  With House Lannister broken, I’ve no banner and no liege lord, unless you count the Imp.”

“Who happens to be married to my sister.”

Sandor barked with laughter.  “Aye, I’d forgotten Lady Sansa was still bound to him.”  He glanced over his shoulder at Arya.  “I can barely walk, barely fight, and I don’t even have a sword.”

Arya sat up beside him and laid her hand on his arm.  “You’re alive.”

“Aye,” he agreed quietly, “I’m alive, and you’re to blame for that.”  He sighed deeply and laid back against the straw tick.  “It only seems fitting you should be stuck with me now.”

“I’m always glad to have your blade at my back.”

“Then quit whinging on about it.”

 Sandor opened his arms for Arya again, and this time she laid her head on his shoulder.  Impulsively, she wrapped her arm around his waist and gave it a squeeze.

“Thank you.”

Gruffly, he answered, “Aye, well, I’ve no place better to be.  The food’s shit, but at least I know you won’t stick a blade in my back without good reason.”


	8. Arkonet

When they disembarked in Arkonet, Sandor was at Arya’s side. 

Gazing around at the ramshackle structures, looking to be built primarily of drift wood, Sandor grunted, “Aye, I can see now why I’ve never heard of Arkonet.”

Goats bleated from pens wedged between the rickety buildings and chickens strutted with immunity across the high street.  The entire town smelled like a barn yard.

Arya snorted.  “So long as they can resupply us with fresh water, some livestock, and a few more sailors, I don’t care what it looks like.”

Only a handful of sailors had decided to jump ship, and they had scarpered off as soon as the gangplank had gone down.  Since Wellyn would be busy searching for new crew, it had fallen to Arya to see to stocking the holds.  After a few hours, they’d secured enough goods to fully supply the ship, and at prime prices.  More than once, merchants had glanced warily between Arya, clad in her leathers with her blade at her side, and Sandor, unarmed but wearing his repaired brigadine and glowering down at them from his great height.  Few of them seemed inclined to haggle.

“I thought that last one was going to shit himself when you demanded he double the number of chickens for that price.”

Sandor smirked down at Arya.  “Aye, well, if you aren’t mining in the Westerlands, you’re farming.  I spent enough of my time as a lad collecting taxes from tenants to know what a hen or a goat or a horse is worth.”

Arya stopped dead in the street.  “I didn’t know that.”

He glanced over his shoulder, waiting for Arya to catch him up.  “Which bit?”

She laughed.  “Any of it.  I’ve never been to the Westerlands.  As a girl, my septa’s lessons were confined to just enough reading and mathematics to make sure I could keep household accounts and count my stitches.”  Her face crumpled into a sour grimace.  “The Maester made sure the boys knew the names of the houses, their words, who was married to whom, and so forth, but he hadn’t much time for us.  Instead they wanted to make sure I could sew and dance and play the lute.”

It was Sandor’s turn to laugh.  “I’d have liked to have seen that!  Were you any good?”

“Gods, no.  My playing is bad, my sewing is worse, and my writing is barely legible.  I despised every minute spent with our septa.  The main focus of her life was to make sure Sansa turned into a perfect lady so she could one day marry Joffrey and be his little queen.  She thought I was a right little hellion.”

He grinned down at her.  “She wasn’t wrong.”

Arya smirked back.  “I suppose not.  Let’s turn down here.”

As they turned down a side street lined with refuse, the sound of a hammer ringing on steel pierced the air.  When they reached the smith, Arya summoned him.

“Show me your best steel.  I need a pair of dirks, a longsword, and a greatsword if you’ve got one.”

The grimy, stringy smith had to be seventy if he was a day.  He looked Arya over and stammered, “For you, milady?” with barely contained incredulity.

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “Not today.  For my friend.”

The smith’s eyes took even longer to travel over Sandor, and his toothless jaw sagged in wonder.  “Aye . . .”  His wide eyes made the tour over the warrior’s frame again, this time shrewdly, measuring.  “The dirks are no problem, but the swords . . . it’ll take a moment, but let me see what I can find.”

It took some time, but the smith finally returned bearing a bundle of blades wrapped in canvas.  They chimed together softly as he laid the lot on the table, and Arya and Sandor leaned close to see what would be revealed when he peeled back the canvas.

There were a dozen blades there, most adequately long enough to serve as a longsword for Sandor.  He took up the longest amongst them, poorly made but with adequate material that it could be sharpened back to a reasonable weapon.  He gave it an experimental swing but grimaced at the balance.

Arya nudged aside a blade with a heavy ornamental hilt distastefully.  Near the bottom of the pile, she saw a leather-wrapped hilt with a brushed steel pommel.

“Sandor, what about this one?  It looks to be castle forged, perhaps of Dornish make.”

The smith’s eyes widened.  “Milady knows her blades.”

Sandor took the blade from her and hefted it experimentally.  “Aye, this may do . . .”

The smith watched Sandor and Arya watched the smith.  Something about the man just wasn’t quite right . . . She glanced down at his feet, clad in coarse sandals, and then more closely at the rest of him.

“I don’t think so.”  She leaned over the table.  “Do you know who I am?”

He tore his eyes away from his appraisal of Sandor.  “I’ve no idea, milady.”

She drew a blackened steel coin from inside the palm of her glove and laid it on the table.  The smith’s eyes widened.

“You’re a long way from home, friend.”  She reached out and tore the smith’s tattered robes off his shoulder to reveal the broad shoulder and powerful chest of a man decades younger than the face he wore.

The smith’s expression became wolfish, calculating, feral.  His wide eyes narrowed in appraisal, and he smirked darkly.  “Valar Morghulis.”

“Valar Dohaeris.  Do you recognize me now?”

“A man hears many rumors, but who can say which are true and which are lies?  A man heard a story many years ago that there was a Westerosi girl who came to the House of Black and White and studied the ways of the Many Faced God for a time, even though she was not one of us.  A man amongst us was most distressed when he had to send a woman to take the face of his favorite student.  Two left the House of Black and White, but two did not return to the House of Black and White.”

“A name was spoken and a face was given to the Many Faced God.”

The smith offered a brief bow.  “Valar Morghulis.”

“Valar Dohaeris.”  She skimmed her eye over the blades again.  “I think you can do better.”

The smith carefully righted his garments, cinching the belt more tightly at his waist.  He nodded and retreated back into his shop once again.

Sandor watched the smith rummaging through a chest at the back of the shop.  “What was that about?”

“He’s not what he seems.”

Sandor snorted.  “Aye, I see that now.  How did you know?”

Arya didn’t want to meet his eyes and made a show of picking through the inferior blades.  “Smithing is hard work and makes for a strong man.  His face didn’t match what his body ought to be.”

Sandor’s eyes narrowed venomously at Arya.  “Know that from experience do you?”

Arya was saved from responding by the return of the smith.  He unrolled another canvas bundle, his eyes glittering.

“I think you’ll find these more acceptable.”

This time, the smith had offered them a number of castle forged blades, and beneath them . . .

“By the Seven, is that what I think it is?”

Arya pulled from beneath the castle forged steel a longsword with a dark, gleaming blade, nearly black, set into a simple leather-bound double-handed hilt.  Along the length of the blade swirled lighter bands of steel like rippling water.

“This one,” Arya breathed.  She handed it to Sandor, careful not to cut herself.

As he swung his blade, his eyes widened in surprise.  That was enough for her.

“How much?”

The smith smirked with satisfaction.  “Fifteen dragons.”

“Done.”

“What?”  Sandor nearly dropped the Valyrian blade in surprise.  “That’s outrageous!”

Arya ignored him.  “And I’ll also take a dozen of your best dirks, the rest of these,” she indicated the second bundle of blades, “and the Dornish blade as well.  Deliver them to the _Dire Dawn_ tonight.”

The smith lifted a brow, “That will be—“

Before the smith could finish his sentence, Arya’s Valyrian dagger was at his throat.  She spread the coins across the smith’s table and softly purred, “Your gift to me, thanking me for not exposing you for what you really are or killing you here and now and taking whatever I damn well please.  Valar morghulis.”

He sneered at her.  “Valar dohaeris.”

Arya nodded curtly and reminded him, “We’ll need scabbards for the lot.”

The smith turned away to rummage amongst his wares, and Arya watched his every move.  It would be just like a Faceless Man to slip her a poisoned blade or shoot a dart loaded with sweetsleep at her if she wasn’t vigilant.  They would need to depart as soon as possible once the _Dire Dawn_ was loaded.  The last thing she wanted on her ship was another Faceless Man, even one as inept as this one.

Sandor took her roughly by the arm.  “Girl—“

Arya narrowed her eyes but refused to look away from the smith.  “You call me ‘girl’ one more time, and you’re likely to find my dagger someplace uncomfortable.”

Sandor tightened his lips as though holding back a retort he knew he was likely to regret.  “Fine. Arya, do we have the coin for this?  I’ve no need for a Valyrian blade.  One of the lesser blades will serve.”

Arya shrugged.  He wasn’t wrong to ask.  She’d sailed out of King’s Landing with more than enough to front her venture, but she’d have to be careful with their coin.  Arya had no idea where they’d end up or even if she’d be able to exchange Westerosi coin when they got there.  The last thing she wanted was to have to incur a debt with the Iron Bank if indeed they ended up in Essos.

“I don’t think we can afford to not have you armed, and only a fool would pass up the chance to acquire a Valyrian blade.  Trouble seems to follow us, whether we go looking for it or not, and I’d have you armed as well as we can manage.  Even injured, you’re thrice the swordsman of most anyone else I know.”

“Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister saw to it that most of the great swordsmen in the realm were turned to ash.  There’s little competition left for the honor in Westeros.”

Distantly, she murmured, “Imagine my luck to have one of the last ones alive sharing my cabin.”

When the smith returned with the scabbard for Sandor’s blade, Arya clasped his forearm.  “I sail for the west and likely won’t return.  You have my word; not a soul will know you are here.”

The smith nodded thoughtfully and held up one of Arya’s coins.  “Five years a man has worn this face, waiting for the opportunity to take ship back to Braavos.  If a girl returns, a man will be long gone.”

He glanced appraisingly between the two of them.  “It’s rare that a face escapes the grasp of the Many Faced God.  A girl is easily recognized, and many would be eager to claim the faces of a girl and her companion.  Once a name has been spoken, it cannot be unspoken.  If a girl keeps a man’s secret, hers will remain ash on his tongue.”

Arya squeezed his arm and released him.  “Done.”

* * *

Arya was grateful to find that the inn seemed to be the only well-appointed establishment in Arkonet.  With luck they might be able to find a decent meal.  The dingy taproom was so crowded that it was difficult to wend their way between the tables.  Arya fought her way through to the bar and slapped several silver stags on the bar. 

“A room, and supper.”

The short, round man behind the bar glanced between them.  “Will it be just the one room or two?”

Arya glanced over her shoulder at Sandor, and he shrugged irritably.  With another Faceless Man in the town, it made more sense for them to stay together.

“Just the one room, but bring us supper for three.”

Arya and Sandor barely had time to set down their blades before a curvy middle-aged barmaid with mousy brown curls brought their food to the room.  Arya noticed the woman give Sandor an appraising look, but he was far more interested in the thick slabs of roast pork on the platter than her. 

They ate in silence.  When Arya had finished, she leaned back in her chair and watched Sandor eat with increasing amusement.  As ever, she was astounded he could consume such a massive quantity of victuals in such a short period of time. 

He glanced up from sopping gravy from the platter with a bit of bread, and gave her a dirty look.  “What?”

“You eat like you haven’t had a decent meal since—“

“Winterfell?”

Arya frowned.  Damned if he wasn’t right.  All the way to King’s Landing, they’d had little in their purses and had eaten primarily what they could find or kill along the way.  Not that she’d been hungry.  She could have eaten bowl after bowl of sawdust and not noticed the difference.  Even after King’s Landing, he’d eaten little as he recuperated from his catastrophic injuries.

Arya dropped the legs of her chair back onto the floor and rose abruptly.

“The fuck are you going?”

“To order more food.  You’re right . . . you’ve barely eaten since—“

He glowered up at her.  “I died.  Aye.”

Arya opened the door and was fortunate enough to pass the message on to a passing bar maid.  She closed the door and dropped back into her chair.  Propping her head on her hand, she watched him devour the roasted root vegetables left on her own plate.

“When you served the Lannisters,” Sandor’s head shot up and he glared at Arya.  She was   quickly learning that this was a tender topic between them.  Arya ignored his expression and continued thoughtfully, “you were always there, standing at attention behind either Cersei or Joffrey.  Every banquet, every session of court, every waking moment, always there, always watching.”

Sandor’s face was getting stonier with every syllable Arya uttered and his eyes glittered maliciously.  “Aye . . . ?”

“When did you eat?  When did you sleep?”

He froze, his expression of rage slowly transformed one of surprise.  He wiped his mouth on a scrap of cloth that had come with the meal.  “I didn’t, much.  Most often I ate what I could grab from the kitchens between one thing or another, and I was lucky to steal a few hours of sleep a night.”

“You don’t like it when I ask about the past, do you?”

Sandor leaned back from the table and shoved his plate away.  “I’m not proud to have served them like I did, for as long as I did.”  He glanced up guiltily.  “If I’d been a better man, there’s things I could have done that maybe could have made a difference for you.  For your sister.  For your father.”

Arya took a sip of her ale and shook her head.  “There wasn’t anything anyone could have done.  Not even King Robert could control the Lannisters.  I haven’t blamed you for any of that for years.  Do you think I could sleep next to you if I did?”

Sandor shrugged.  “If your knife ever did find its way into my gut, I’d accept it as a debt paid, and I’d never think the worse of you for it.”

Arya stood pulled off her boots and shrugged out of her brigadine, hanging it on the back of her chair.  “As far as I’m concerned, the Hound is dead.  He died during the Battle of Blackwater Bay or somewhere in the Riverlands, and good riddance to the black bastard.”  She laid her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it.  “I don’t think you’ve been that man for a very long time.”


	9. The Smith

It had taken nearly a week to secure the remaining crewmen and outfit the ship, but finally their last day in Westeros had come.  She’d sent ravens to Bran in King’s Landing and Sansa in Winterfell with her final farewell.  While the captain settled the crew for the voyage and saw to the final details for their departure, Arya had decided to enjoy the hospitality of the inn for one last night before boarding the _Dire Dawn_ in the morning.

Wellyn had brought her a new set of charts supposedly showing the few known islands throughout the Sunset Sea during their lunch, and she was anxious to study it.  Arya spread the map on the table of the tavern, weighing its curling edges with their cups and the flagon of ale.  She dropped down on the bench beside him, excitement thrumming through her veins now that they were so close to the jumping off point.

“We’re about to leap off the very edge of the world.  You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”

Sandor grunted noncommittally.  “I’ve no place better to be.  Besides, the gods alone know what kind of trouble you’ll find yourself in with no one to mind you.”  He leaned closer, his eyes boring into Arya and their faces only inches apart.  “The number of times you’ve asked me, I’m starting to think you’re the one who’s not sure.  You’re certain you want to leave your family behind after everything you went through to get back home?”

Arya paused and looked hard at Sandor.  Something in her stomach twisted and fluttered nervously that was not the thrill of the adventure before them.  Since their first night in Arkonet, she’d not again broached the subject of his past.  It was true what she’d told him.  So much had changed since the day the Hound had killed Micah that she couldn’t really reconcile the man who sat beside her with the man he had been so long ago.  She wanted to leave Westeros and all it meant behind.  She needed to let him do the same.

She clasped Sandor’s hand where it rested slack around the base of his cup.  “I just want to be free.  With your face and my name, there’s no place in Westeros where the past won’t catch up with us.”  Arya leaned closer and asked seriously, “Don’t you want to be free of it?  All of it?”

Sandor’s gaze shifted between her eyes, as though searching them for a lie.  “Aye, I want to be free.”

Arya tentatively brushed the tip of her nose against the long bridge of his. “Then come with me and be free.”

Slowly, unsure if he would permit it, Arya lifted her face and stretched her neck so that she could brush her lips against his.  To her surprise, at the last instant, he leaned infinitesimally closer, and met her lips with his own.  His lips were warm and softer than she would have guessed, and he leaned closer, pressing his forehead against hers and barely breathing.

Sandor broke their kiss with an expression of deepest agony, his eyes pressed shut as though he couldn’t bear to look at her.  His throat scraped across the words as he hoarsely murmured, “The fuck are you doing here with me, girl?”

“Girl?”  Arya cocked her brow.  For fuck’s sake, were they really back to that again?

“Aye, girl.”  Sandor glowered at her.  “You could be back in Westeros sucking your pretty smith’s cock with that smart mouth of yours, but you’re here with me instead.  Why?”

Arya snatched her hand back from his and snapped back in her chair, as incensed as if he’d slapped her.

 “You ungrateful shit!” she spat.  Heads turned from the tables around them, but Arya ignored them.  “I could have left you in a pool of your own blood in King’s Landing, but I drug you out and stitched your worthless carcass back together.  I chose the ass end of the world and you over all the riches of Westeros.  If you don’t—“

“Aye?”  Sandor asked quietly.  He glanced slightly to her left and lifted his chin.  “Would you make that choice again?”

Arya whipped around to find Gendry winding his way through the crowded taproom, his eyes hard and his mouth clenched in determination. 

“Seven bloody fucking hells.”

She turned slowly back around to answer Sandor, but he was gone.  She barely glimpsed him limping back up the stairs to their room before Gendry grabbed her sleeve.

“By the Seven, I can’t believe you’re here.”

Bewildered, Arya rose from her chair slowly. 

Gendry seized her in a tight embrace, and Arya asked, bewildered, “How the fuck did you find us?”

“Believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

Over Gendry’s shoulder, Arya craned her neck, looking for Sandor.  She caught a glimpse of him at the top of the stair, one hand resting on the rail.  Her eyes locked on Sandor’s, but Arya was caught off guard when Gendry pressed an enthusiastic kiss to her mouth.  When she broke away from the smith, she glanced back up at Sandor, hoping desperately he’d turned away before Gendry had kissed her.

Sandor looked truly stricken.  In the depths of his dark eyes, Arya saw that he was completely shattered, betrayed by that one, thoughtless kiss.  He tightened his mouth and turned away.

Oblivious, Gendry babbled on, “Your ship listed port unknown with the harbormaster, but there was a notation that said you’d stop here to take on water.”

Gendry as ruggedly handsome as the first time she’d seen him.  He was many weeks unshaven, and his hair was a wild tousle of short black curls.  Arya tore her gaze away from him to look for Sandor, but he was gone. 

 “Gendry—“ Arya smiled weakly and corrected herself, “Lord Baratheon—“

His face fell and he gripped her shoulders.  “Stop.”

“I would have thought by now that you’d be half way to—“

“Stop!”  He gave the smallest of shakes to her shoulders and leaned low into her face.  “I’m no lord of anything!  The queen that naturalized me is dead, and I’ve no army or family to help me take Storm’s End.  I may have sat on the council that made your brother king, but it’ll take a lot more than a decree from the king to make me a lord.”

“I’m so sorry.” 

Arya looked up into his wild eyes, and realized that truly, she was.  As long as she’d known him, all he’d ever wanted was something to belong to.  Something to make him more than an indentured orphaned bastard.  Just for a moment, he had been.

“I’m not sorry.”  Gendry took a deep breath.  “I don’t want no castle; I want you.  Is it really that you don’t want to be my wife, or is it just that you don’t want to be a lady?  Because I’ll give it up.  It’ll be a lot easier to give up Storm’s End and go back to being a smith than to spend the next ten years of my life trying to take something that’s not mine to begin with.”  He captured Arya’s face between his hands.  “I’d rather give up being a lord than let you go.”

Dazed, Arya grasped Gendry’s wrists and gently pulled his hands away from her burning cheeks.   She turned away from Gendry and began rolling the map she and Sandor had been studying, furtively glancing at the stairs.

“Do you know why I left Winterfell?”

Gendry leaned to the side, hoping to catch her eye.  He shrugged convulsively.  “I’ve no idea.  I thought maybe you didn’t get along so good with your sister.”

Arya glanced up long enough to flash him a tight grimace.   “Sansa and I have never really seen eye to eye on much of anything, but that’s not why I left Winterfell.”  Arya rolled the map tighter and knotted a leather thong around it.  She forced herself to look at Gendry.  “I left Winterfell to go to King’s Landing to kill Cersei.  I knew I’d probably die trying.”  She glanced between his eyes, silently begging him to understand.  He was still a good man, just not one she wanted to be bound to, regardless if he was a smith or the lord of a castle.  “I would have rather died killing Cersei than spend the rest of my life pretending to be someone I wasn’t.  I want to live the rest of my life wearing my own face!”

Gendry blinked and frowned down at her in consternation.  “Wear your own face?  What does that mean?”

Arya sighed and couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder yet again in the direction Sandor had retreated. 

“I left Westeros because I wanted to leave all of that behind me.  Bowing and scraping for titles and thrones and borders and vendettas . . .”  She laid a hand on his arm consolingly.  “I want to be free.”

Gendry jabbed a finger in the direction of the stairs.  “And that’s what you’re doing here with him?”  He spat the final word in disgust.  “Sailing to the edge of the map with the Hound isn’t freedom!  That’s just running away!” 

Gendry leaned closer, his eyes blazing, and hissed, “I saw you, you know.  You look like you’re thick as thieves, the two of you, but the last I remember, you was screaming for his blood and begging Beric to chop him to bits!”

Abruptly, he leaned away, his features clearing.  “Is that what this is?  What?  Are you trying to lure him in to finish him off?  We can do it together, and then we can go—“

“No!”  She shook Gendry off.  “For fuck’s sake!  I’m not trying to kill him!”

“What then?  What in seven hells can be between you and the Hound that the two of you would come all the way out here together?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

Arya turned away from Gendry, intending to follow Sandor up the stairs, but Gendry blocked her path.  A tongue of tightly controlled anger ignited somewhere inside Arya, and it licked its way across her skin.  She flicked her eyes up at him and Gendry quailed.

He held his hands up in placation.  “You think he’s your friend?  Or, or, what?  He’s your shield?”  He dropped his voice and purred, “He’s a hard man, the Hound.  There’s not a thing in this world that he cares about except killing.”  Gendry stroked a thumb down Arya’s cheek.  “That’s not you, love.”

Arya pressed her lips together as she looked up at her pretty smith.  He was handsome but weak.  He had all kinds of romantic notions about what the world could be, but not the mettle to change it.  Worst of all, when she looked at him, she saw a man that didn’t know her at all.

“There’s one thing . . . only one thing in this world Sandor Clegane cares about, that he’s willing to die for.”

“Yeah?”  Gendry scoffed derisively.  “What’s that then?”

 “Me.”


	10. Bone Deep

When Arya slipped back into their room, Sandor was shoving his meager possessions into a sack with such ferocity she was surprised the seams of the bag didn’t rip.  She closed the door softly and leaned against it, watching.  When he’d finished, Sandor threw the bag onto a nearby chair and pressed trembling hands into the table, breathing hard through his nose.

At length, he finally spat, “You’re a cold little bitch, aren’t you?”  He glared at her, but when Arya refused to respond, he asked, “What was the point of it all?  Why did you bother hauling my broken worthless ass out of King’s Landing?”

Softly, Arya answered, “You fought for me.”  Unbidden, her boots carried her to Sandor’s side.  “I left you to die once before.  I wasn’t going to do it again.”

“I’d rather be dead or blind than have to watch you go off with that whinging, spineless little shit, Lord Gendry fucking Baratheon.” 

Sandor picked up his brigadine and shrugged into its weight.  Beneath his breath, he muttered, “I should have beaten him to a bloody smear on the cobblestones like I wanted to in Winterfell.”

“What?”

Arya grabbed Sandor’s elbow, but he shook her off as he reached for his sword belt.

“Nothing.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”  He answered her with a scathing glare.  Arya demanded, “Tell me!”

Cinching his sword belt tight, Sandor turned and roared, “You couldn’t take a breath in Winterfell that night without breathing in the stench of them!  Thousands and thousands of frozen men roasting on the funeral pyres we had spent days building, and your pretty smith noncing around from foot to foot, wanting to know where you’d gone.  Couldn’t think of anything but finding you so he could stick his twitchy little cock back in you!”

The blood drained from Arya’s face, and she felt lightheaded.  “I didn’t,” she choked, “We didn’t—“

“Like hell you didn’t!  We both know you damn well—“

“Not that night!  I had to light the pyre under Beric Dondarrion!  He gave his life to save us, and I don’t even know why!” 

Sandor strode across the room and reached to wrench the door open, muttering something that sounded distinctly like, “ . . . ungrateful . . .”, but Arya slammed her hands into his chest and shoved him away. 

“I was so sick from the stench, I couldn’t eat.  Even the wine tasted sweet and oily like burning flesh!  I was in the courtyard practicing the bow when the damned fool found me.”

Sandor’s eyes flashed dangerously.  “Aye?  Have a good tumble, did you?  Ned Stark would have died before letting his favorite daughter rut with a Baratheon bastard in his own—“

“No!” 

Incensed, Arya’s hand shot out to strike Sandor, but he caught her wrist neatly, the bones grinding painfully in his grasp.  For the first time in all the years she’d known him, Sandor’s rage was balanced precariously and barely contained , and every ounce of it was aimed strait at her.  Still, Arya couldn’t stop herself. 

She roared, “Gendry asked me to marry him.  He wanted me to be the Lady of Storm’s End.”

“What?”  Sandor froze.  He stared at Arya with something between horror and disgust.  “Two weeks we were on the road to King’s Landing, and not once did you speak his fucking name.  Not once did you say—“

Arya jerked her hand back out of Sandor’s loosening grasp.  “I told him no.”

“Why?  You let him bed you easy enough.”

“Only because I didn’t want to be alone the night before the Battle of Winterfell.”  Arya stared down Sandor, and his anger seemed to be slowly ebbing.  She picked up his sack from the chair and dropped it onto the floor so she could sit.  Searching for an excuse to not look at him, she rolled a map she’d left lying on the table.  “I’d have watched with you through the night if Beric hadn’t turned up.”

They glared hotly at one another for several minutes until Sandor crossed the room and grabbed the other chair.  It scraped deafeningly in the charged silence as Sandor drug it back to the table.  She nudged the cup on the table with her fingertips, and he grudgingly filled it with cheap wine from the flagon on the table.  Sandor sat back in his chair, scrutinizing Arya over crossed arms.

Arya stared sightlessly down into her cup and shrugged angrily.  “I finally made it back home to what was left of my family, and what had it all been for?  We’d spent years fighting the Lannisters, only to be slaughtered by the dead in the end.  I thought . . .” Arya traced the rim of her cup with her fingertip, “ . . . I thought if I was going to die anyway, I wanted to know a man just once.”  Arya’s cheeks burned.  “I didn’t want to die a maid.”

“Aye?”  Arya didn’t have to look up to see how Sandor’s eyes smoldered.  His words dripped with derision.  “And was it worth it?  Giving away your maidenhead to the worthless little cunt?”

Arya frowned and shook her head slightly.  “I thought it would be different.  I thought it would fill me up and make me forget for a while, but it didn’t.  When it was done, I couldn’t sleep.  I looked at him and felt . . . nothing.  I realized loving a man in the flesh means damn near nothing if he doesn’t love you to the bone.

“Gendry doesn’t know me.  He doesn’t know the things I’ve done.  If he did . . .”  She grimaced and drained her cup.  “If he knew me at all, he’d know I’d never just put away my blade and keep his castle or stoke his forge for him.  Not once have I ever wanted that kind of life.”

Defiantly, she looked up at Sandor.  “I’m a killer.  I’ll always be a killer.  I don’t need a man that wants me to live every day inside a face that’s not mine.”

Arya pushed her cup back across the table, and Sandor refilled it.  He said nothing, though his hand shook on the flagon, sloshing wine onto the table.

Arya took a sip of the wine and looked at him shrewdly.  “Why did Beric sacrifice himself to save us?”

Sandor shrugged curtly and answered evasively, “Crazy fucker.  Who knows.”

“I think you do.”  She watched him across the lip of her cup.  “One more minute, and the wights would have torn me apart. How did you know where I was?”

Sandor shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and the minutes stretched and taughtened between them.  Finally, he grunted, “Saw you.  You must have had half a dozen of the fuckers on you, but you were cutting them down as fast as they came . . .”  He grinned and snorted in amusement.  “You were like the Stranger’s own blade, and you had this . . . smile all the while . . .”  Sandor caught her eye and sobered.  “We saw you fall, and I . . . You looked like you were hurt so we came after you.”

“But why hold them back so we could get away?”

 “Maybe he knew all along that was how it was going to end for him.  The red woman seemed to think so.  Who fucking knows what the Lord of Light showed him in the fire?”

Arya sat her cup back on the table.  “You want to know why I’m here?”

Sandor glanced up from contemplating the bottom of his cup and snorted derisively. 

Arya took this as assent and continued, “You’re right.  I could have stayed in Westeros with a pretty cunt of a smith and kept his castle and played the game of thrones until they put me in my crypt.  That’s not me.”

Arya stood and edged around the table, Sandor eyeing her all the while.  She took his empty cup from between his fingers and placed it on the table beside hers. 

“I left my home and my family and an offer of marriage to go with you to King’s Landing.  I knew I’d die trying to kill Cersei and the Mountain, but I didn’t care.  I knew you’d be right there next to me with your foot in the same grave as mine, and that was good enough for me.”

Though he jerked his head away as her fingers came close to touching the scarred side of his face, Arya laid her palm on the twisted and ridged flesh and turned Sandor’s face so he had to look up at her. 

“I knew if you had to, you’d die trying to end him, and I wasn’t going to let you face death alone again.”

Slowly, cautiously, Arya brought her face close to Sandor’s.  She grazed the length of his nose with her own, and he closed his eyes and sucked in a quick breath.  When he didn’t push her away, she rested her forehead against his.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man that can’t see who I am, when it’s as plain as the blood on my blade.”  Arya stroked a thumb over the scars that disfigured Sandor’s face.  “But a man who sees me for what I am and doesn’t mind it, a man who will fight for me to his last breath, without promise of reward, that’s a man I could live with.  I’d die for him . . . or beside him.”  Arya planted a soft, chaste kiss on his lips.  “Gendry Baratheon doesn’t love me for what I am, but I think that you might.”

His voice was thick with regret when he answered, “You don’t want me, girl.  I’m old.  I’m slow.  I’m not the man I was when we went to King’s Landing.”  Sandor cupped her face in the depths of his hand and frowned sadly at her.  “Go find the lad.  Let him take you home.  You’ve spent enough of your life fighting.  Enjoy living what’s left of your days.”

Arya shook her head and huffed in amusement.  “I made my choice and sent him away.  Do you really want me to leave you now?”

Sandor’s breaths were coming quick and shallow.  He took Arya’s face in both trembling hands and answered defiantly, “No.  I fucking well do not.”

He kissed Arya tentatively, as though afraid that she would recoil from his touch. 

As a rule, Sandor didn’t permit people to touch him, leastwise, no one but Arya.  Sharing a horse in the Riverlands and sleeping pressed against his chest as they traveled, Arya was long familiar with the rhythm of his heart, his solid warmth.  Fighting beside him, she’d learned to time her movements to his and how to fit her tiny frame inside the space occupied by his much longer reach.  Striding beside him through King’s Landing to face death in King’s Landing, she’d learned to match his gait and to trust his firm but gentle hand at her back as he guided and guarded her through the chaos. 

When Gendry had touched her, it had made her heart race, but it had been awkward, like wearing someone else’s boots.  This was different.  Her heart raced now, but to a familiar beat.  It felt like a new verse to a nearly forgotten tune.

Arya laid her hands over Sandor’s and guided them away from her face.  She swung her leg over his to straddle his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.  He rested his fists on her knees, as though unsure how or if he should touch her.  She kissed the corner of his mouth, and he turned his face, chasing her lips with his own, meeting them with a gentle kiss.  Encouraged, Arya opened his lips with a deeper kiss, and his hands clenched convulsively.  She tightened her grip on his neck and slowly, moment by moment, kiss by kiss, Sandor’s reservations melted away.  Nervously, he spread his broad hands across the top of her legs, and she tightened her thighs around his hips.  Soon, his hands slid ever so slowly over her hips until he was cradling her in his arms, pressing her body against his.

Arya was intrigued by this new, delicate dance between them.  Every shared glance with Sandor, every feather-light touch between them was a tacit question . . . May I?  Here?  Like this?  It was intoxicating, this slow, hesitant testing of boundaries.  Each sigh was a small claiming, territories fully shared and possessed by both victor and concessor.  Arya was piquantly self-aware, awash in the realization of her power to give or to deny and the pleasure to be had in the giving.

Though she’d touched the ravaged side of his face only minutes earlier, the tenuous new intimacy between them now made her crave his consent. 

“Sandor . . .” His breath caught in his throat and his eyes bored into her, and Arya was suddenly afraid to ask.  Her hand hovered above his cheek.  “Does it . . . does it hurt you when I . . . ?”

“No,” he breathed, though something dark shifted behind his eyes.

“May I . . . touch you?  Here?”

He dipped his head in shame, almost touching her shoulder.  Quietly, he growled, “Aye.  If you can stomach it.  If you can stand the sight of me.”

Arya caressed the puckered skin with the back of her fingers, and a fine tremor shuddered through him.  She gently raised his heavy head with a hand beneath his chin, and she pressed her lips to the scars.  She kissed what remained of his ear, his cheek, the lid of his drooping eye, the corner of his mouth.

When he could finally bring himself to meet her gaze, she gave him the whisper of a smile.  “I was never afraid of your face.”

Sandor wove his fingers into Arya’s hair and guided her face back for a firmer kiss than he’d dared yet offer, and heat blossomed inexorably within her, filling her like a fine mead.  When he broke their kiss, Arya sighed, and the corner of his wide mouth twitched with satisfaction. 

“Aye, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you afraid of anything.”

Arya spread her hands across Sandor’s chest, her thumb toying nervously with the clasp of his brigadine.  “I’m afraid all the time.”

Sandor ran a broad, warm hand down her back and asked softly, “Are you afraid now?”

She nodded slowly.  “I’m looking at the Twins all over again.  I’m close enough to what I want that I can taste it, and I’m afraid it will be snatched away again.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No!”  The answer had come too quickly, too sharply, and he lifted his brows in surprise.  Softly, she amended, “No.  I just want to make sure that you’ll still be here in the morning . . . and the day after.”

Sandor leaned closer and gently kissed Arya.  “Aye, I’ll be here.  So long as you still want me, I’ll be here.”

Arya surfaced from a longer, lingering kiss that left her slightly dizzy.  “And if I say I don’t?  Will you stay anyway?”

He smirked.  “Aye, I imagine I will.  I’ve put up with your temper long enough to know when you mean it and when you don’t.”

Arya searched his face.  “How do you know when I mean it?”

Emboldened, Sandor wrapped his arms more securely around Arya and kissed her soundly, trailing kisses down her neck that rasped and tickled her delicate northern skin.  Surprised by the sensation and how it stirred the writhing moist heat building within her, she wriggled against him. 

Arya clutched his shoulders and gasped, “How do you know?”

Sandor ran his hands over her shoulders and down her arms to clasp her fingers.  “When you’re really angry, you’re cold and quiet as the grave, and you make your point with steel, not your foul tongue.”

Arya smiled into his next kiss and purred, “Mmmm, you do know me.”

“Mmm hmm.” 

Sandor’s fingers lightly traced her ribs, one thumb bravely straying far enough to caress the curve of her breast.  Arya laid her head on Sandor’s shoulder, enjoying the anticipation of his ever bolder touch as much as his fondling itself. 

She nuzzled the soft skin beneath his ear and asked, “How many times have we offered ourselves to the Many Faced God, and still he sends us back to one another?  Every time we’re apart, the Stranger comes close to claiming us.  Maybe if I consent to a life with you, you can stop dying for me.”

Arya kissed Sandor, but this time, her kiss didn’t ask.  Arya’s clever fingers found first the clasps of his brigadine, and then the laces of his sark.  When she spread her hands across his bared chest, he gasped and surfaced from their kiss panting.

“Are you sure?”  His features contorted with doubt and self-loathing.  “You’d be willing to wake up next to this,” he indicated his scars with an angry gesture, “every morning of your life?”

Arya pulled her tunic over her head and leaned back in his arms, displaying the ugly scars crisscrossing her belly.  “Would you be willing to take what’s left of this, knowing I’d likely never give you a son?”

His eyes travelled down her body, but he didn’t touch her.  Sandor drew Arya close to him again, wrapped his arms securely around her, and he kissed her gently on the lips.

“All my life, I’ve been alone.  I never dreamed I’d find someone who would stand and fight with me, little lone a woman who’d take me of her own free will.  If you’d have me, I’d be true to you until the Stranger drug me away from your side.”

Tentatively, he stroked the back of his fingers down her face.  Sandor kissed his way down the curve of her throat, and Arya arched her back, lifting her breasts eagerly to his mouth.  After a tense moment with his hand resting on her shoulder and a tremulous kiss to her neck, Sandor allowed himself to gently trace the curve of one breast with the side of his thumb.  He glanced up at her, hopeful but afraid, seeking her consent.

Arya threaded her fingers into his hair to encourage him to bring his lips back to her skin and arched against him, grinding her body against his hardening cock.  Sandor groaned softly into Arya’s shoulder.  Gratified, she repeated the movement, and this time he grasped her buttocks firmly, both to increase the pressure of her body against his and to allow the tips of his long fingers to stroke tantalizingly over the increasingly damp cloth that separated his touch from the moist folds of her body.

He swept a thumb over Arya’s hardened nipple, and she sighed in pleasure.  He continued kissing sweetly down her neck while his fingers of his other hand stroked gently over the lips of her entrance. 

Desire built within Arya, making her dizzy with pleasure.  She followed the arch of Sandor’s strong, broad back, searching for the hem of his shirt.  Unable to find it, she bunched the fabric in her fist and tugged in frustration.  With a breathy laugh, Sandor released her long enough to pull it off, and as soon as his head reemerged, she sought his mouth and his kiss. 

Into her ear, Sandor growled, “Gods, woman, I want you.  Tell me true if this is want you want.  I’d not take you unless I’m certain you’d be mine.”

Arya arched against him again, and again pressed his head down to her breasts.  Sandor answered with a growl of desire that resonated from deep within his chest and a thrust of his rigid cock against her.  He circled a nipple deftly with his tongue before taking it deep into his mouth.  He suckled her voraciously, sending waves of desire flooding through her body.

“Sandor . . .”

At the sound of his name, he moaned softly and raised his head.  After a deep lingering kiss that left her writhing sinuously against him and panting, Arya found his ear and sighed, “Yes.  I’ll be yours.”

As gracefully as he could manage with his splinted leg, Sandor stood and bore Arya to the bed, her arms wreathed around his shoulders and her thighs clasping his hips.  He tottered as he fetched up against the edge of the bed, and when he braced himself against the wall, Arya seized the opportunity to untie the lacing of his breeches and slide them down over his hips.  The next minutes were frenzied and awkward, as they divested one another between increasingly possessive kisses, careful of his many injuries and the inconvenience of the splint.

Sandor crawled across the threadbare covers to Arya, and she reached for him, eager to feel his body against hers.  He paused, his eyes darkened with uncertainty, and caressed her face.

“Arya, love, are you certain?”

Arya wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down so that she could whisper into his ear, “I am yours and you are mine . . .”

Shocked, he stammered the words back to her, and then with her, intoned, “From this day till the end of my days.”

She kissed him fiercely, and when he broke their kiss wonderingly, she smiled up at him.  “Is that certain enough for you?”

“Aye, that’s good enough for me.”

Sandor kissed her again sweetly, tugging at her lip with his teeth, and gently, slowly eased himself into her warm, slick depths.  Sandor moaned softly into Arya’s shoulder, and she held her breath at first, riding out each tender thrust in equal waves of pleasure at their joining and exquisite pain as her body stretched to accommodate her lover.  As his strokes became firmer, Sandor began to lose himself in the loving, and Arya’s discomfort faded to a dull ache, replaced by ever compounding desire.

Arya clung to his broad shoulders, and Sandor guided her with a firm hand to her hip.  Each of his sighs, his little moans of pleasure at her touch, only goaded her own desire.  Each stroke pushed her closer to feeling as though she would be completely obliterated as the sensations built and swelled within her flesh.  Arya writhed beneath him, now frantic to escape the maddening intensity of her desire, and Sandor answered by driving deeper and harder into Arya to match her rhythm.

When the release came, it was devastating, blinding, and complete.  Arya wrapped an arm around Sandor’s neck and moaned wordlessly into his shoulder as she rode out the waves of pleasure that flooded her body and mind.  With a curse or a prayer, muttered incoherently into Arya’s neck, Sandor followed her soon after.  His arms were like steel, blazing from the forge, wrapped around her as his body arched like a bow to pour his seed into his newly claimed wife.

Sandor hovered above her for a long time, braced on his elbows and fervently kissing every inch of Arya he could reach.  Twice he tried to withdraw from her, and twice, she stopped him, clutching his hip and wriggling beneath him in an attempt to recapture the feeling of his fullness within her.  Each time, he answered with a dazzling smile and a hard thrust that simultaneously made her feel as though she would burst and yet flooded her with a deep desire and fervent wish that he had more to give.  Each time, her own passion would be reignited, and she would once again pull his mouth down to hers, hungry for his love.  When finally she consented to allow him to lay beside her, she missed the feeling of him within her.

Sandor gathered him to her, pressing kisses to her damp forehead.

“Did you mean it?”

Arya hummed sleepily, “Hmm?”

The words seemed to stick in his throat, but still he persisted, “The vow you made to me before I claimed you . . . did you mean the words?”

Arya glanced up at him, pierced at the poignancy of his uncertainty.  She sat up on her hip so that she could look in his eyes, and he could look in hers.

She laid her hand over his heart.  “On my honor as a Stark, I meant every word.  I’ll repeat the vows in any sept you like before the gods and witnesses, but in my heart and in the ways of the old gods my family serves, I have made my pledge.  I’ll be yours until the Many Faced God closes my eyes.”

Arya bent down to kiss Sandor, and his lips trembled at her touch.  He gathered her into a tight embrace and turned so that she was ensconced securely within his arms, her legs dangling over his hip.  He kissed her fervently, and when he drew back, his eyes were bright and her face was wet with his tears.

“Gods, woman, I love you.  I’ll never give you reason to regret it.”


	11. Territories and Boundaries

Hours later, Arya woke boneless, warm, and content.  She was still clasped tightly to Sandor’s side, and when she lifted her head from his shoulder, she was surprised to find him already awake.  The sun had nearly set, and warm golden light filtered through the shuttered windows, picking out red and gold sparks in his hair and beard.  She opened her mouth to speak, but was struck dumb, suddenly self-conscious and unsure of what to say. 

Sandor turned towards her and sought her mouth.  With his blazing, solid body and the softness of his lips pressed against her own, Arya melted into him, and she eagerly accepted his kiss.  One of Sandor’s hands pressed firmly into the small of her back, and her leg drifted up his thigh to hook over his hip.  His free hand caressed the length of her leg, from calf to thigh, his long fingers finally teasing gently between the increasingly wet lips of her core.  Arya broke their kiss with a gasp of pleasure, and his touch retreated, settling instead in a firm, possessive grasp of her bottom.

He gave her another soft kiss before asking, “Are you hungry?”

Realizing she was famished, Arya nodded and started to turn away to rise, but he held her fast.

Sandor murmured, “I’ll go.”

“I’ll go with you, just let me—“ 

Arya tried to sit up, but Sandor tightened his arms around her and gave her a slow, lingering kiss.  “You’re my wife.”  Though murmured softly in the gathering dark, the word glowed like a spark between them.  “I’d care for you if you’d let me.”

Arya narrowed her eyes and almost retorted that she could damn well take care of herself, but she bit the words back.  He knew that.  Something in his guarded expression suggested that this meant a great deal to him.  She chewed on her lip, considering. 

“You want me to just wait here?” 

“I do.”

Reluctantly, Arya said, “Alright . . .”  Sandor let out a short breath he’d evidently been holding.  A thought occurring to her, she grabbed his wrist as he released her and began to climb over her to rise.  “You’ll come back?”

Sandor’s brows drew down and he gazed intently at her.  “I always come back to you.”

Reassured but still slightly unsettled, Arya snuggled back down into the meager blankets provided by the inn.  She watched as Sandor quickly dressed with his back to her.  Even though he was nearly twice her age and had suffered near fatal injuries only a couple of months prior, he was still well in his prime.  She appreciated the hardened muscles that flexed across his thighs and back beneath taught, scarred skin, though her eye was drawn to the many scars she herself had sewn shut.  Such as he was, she knew that he loved her, bone deep, and he was hers.  Her desire began to stir again. 

Sandor grunted softly as he adjusted the splinting around his broken leg.  Arya chewed the inside of her cheek watching him struggle.  She wanted to go to him and help, but she knew that it would rather diminish the gesture.  He leaned heavily on the walking stick as he stumped across the room, and he gave her a last lingering look before he closed the door behind him.

* * *

Every step down the stairs was agony, but he’d be damned if he admitted it to Arya.  Soon enough, he’d be back on the ship, and he’d be sure to stay off the leg until it finished healing.  A pleasurable warmth spread through him as Sandor began to imagine the many enjoyable ways he could find to stay off his feet with his pretty young wife.

The tap room was near full to capacity yet again.  Sandor leaned gratefully onto the bar and levered himself onto the only vacant stool.  When the harried middle-aged barmaid passed, he plucked at her elbow and asked if she would have a tray of supper carried up to their room.

She smiled up at him from under a mop of wild brown curls and said, “Beggin’ your pardon, milord, but you look a right bit happier than when I served you and milady at midday.”

He grinned down at her.  “Aye, you could say that.  Milady has consented to be my wife.”

The barmaid winked conspiratorially up at him.  “Will ye be needing a dram to celebrate, too, then, dearie?”

Sandor pressed a several extra coins into her hand.  “Aye, send up a bottle of Dornish red and a bottle of Arbor gold if you have them, along with bread and cheese.  We set sail on the morrow, and won’t have the chance to celebrate again for a long time.”

She patted Sandor’s arm and winked again.  “Just leave it to me.”  She nodded at a table nearly hidden by the shadows and continued, “Milady’s brother is still here a brooding after their argument, mind.  I’ve asked a couple of the girls to see if he’d like some comp’ny, but he’s just sat there staring into his ale since milady went upstairs wi’ you hours ago.”

 “Her brother?”  Sandor turned in surprise and muttered, “Fucking Jon Snow’s here too?”

“Jon Snow?  Bless me, no!  Wouldn’t that just be . . .”  Her eyes widened in wonder.  “What did you say your name was again, dearie?”

One of the other barmaids was flirting and giggling her way through the taproom lighting candles and lanterns as she went.  When the candles on the table in question flared into life, Sandor glowered darkly.

“That’s not milady’s brother.”

Sandor ground his molars together as he limped heavily through the crowded room, taking particular care that his leg not be jostled. 

When he reached the corner table, he leaned heavily on his staff and growled, “I thought Arya told you to go.”

Gendry Baratheon glared up at Sandor.  Sandor had expected to find him completely pissed drunk, but by the look of the tankard and the flagon in front of him, Gendry had been sitting there for hours literally just staring at his ale, rather than drinking it.

Gendry took a sip of the ale and spat, “Not exactly.”

Sandor snorted.  Like father, like son.  It was exactly like a Baratheon to be completely oblivious when a woman just didn’t want him, and then try to hang on to her until one of them was cold in their grave.  Hopefully, just like his father, this sodding puppy would get distracted by the next pair of tits that sauntered by and go panting after them.

Evenly, Sandor murmured, “At first light, you’d best book your passage back to Westeros.  She’s not going with you.”

Gendry began to rise, but Sandor took half a step closer, and he halted warily.  “That’s not for you to decide.”

“Aye, well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.  It doesn’t change the fact that she’s not going to be yours.  Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”

Gendry dropped back into his seat.  “Tell me something.  What is it with the pair of you?  When the Brotherhood had you, she didn’t want nothing better in the world than to see Beric Dondarrion cut you down with that big flamin’ sword of his.  Next thing I know, you’re both gone and we don’t see you again until Davos and I find the two of you tugging at the Stranger’s cloak and adrift in Blackwater Bay.  When I finally catch up to her here, you’re still right there at her elbow, thick as honey and your heads together like lovers.”

Sandor lifted a brow in grim satisfaction.  That’s right . . . My lover.  My wife.  My seed filling her belly, and maybe one day, my son swelling her womb. 

The corner of his mouth twitched, and Sandor merely replied, “That’s none of your concern.”

Gendry snorted.  “Aye, that’s what she said.  I thought maybe the two of you were out here on some kind of quest or something for the Starks, but now . . .”

Gendry’s eyes wandered over Sandor, as though he might have the answer concealed in one of his pockets.  Sandor shuffled his feet uncomfortably and was suddenly very aware that he’d come down wearing only his untucked sark, trousers, and boots.  His brigadine and blade were upstairs with his wife.

“Something’s different about you.”

“Aye,” Sandor grunted, “I’m getting tired of standing here listening to your whinging.  I’ve told you the way of it.  I advise you to be gone by the time we come down in the morning, or you may find yourself sailing back to Westeros in a box.”  He flung a coin on the table and turned back towards the stairs and the long climb back to the warmth of his bed and the arms of his wife.  “The ale’s on me.”

“Why?”

Sandor tossed a smirk over his shoulder from the bottom step.  “Let’s just say I’m celebrating.”

* * *

By the time Sandor reached the top of the stairs, his leg was screaming in protest, and he was perspiring.  With every step, he’d gotten more anxious, worried that he’d been gone too long.  A whisper at the back of his mind hissed that when he got back, Arya would be gone, somehow slipped away to meet her damned smith lingering in the taproom. 

Sandor paused by the door, his hand on the latch, trying to calm his mind.  He shook his head.  She gave her word, sworn on her own house, that she’d be his the rest of her days.  He would have to trust in that.  If Arya really was his, it wouldn’t do to start doubting her on the very first night of their union.

Sandor pushed the door open, dreading what he might find, and indeed, his heart damn near did stop.  Arya was there, just as she had said she would be.  He’d been gone long enough that she’d fallen asleep again, but she lifted her head from the pillow at the sound of his heavy, uneven tread.

“Took you long enough.” 

She scrubbed the sand from her eyes the way she always had, with the heel of her hand.  The sight of her, still herself and yet now his, was almost more than he could comprehend. 

Something on his face must have alarmed her, because Arya looked intently at Sandor and asked, “What is it?  Is something wrong?”

Hoarsely, he answered, “No, it’s nothing.  I’m just . . . glad you’re still here.   Part of me was sure you’d clear out the moment you saw the back of me.”  He stumped to the table and busied his hands rearranging his sword belt and blades on the table.  He didn’t look at her when he murmured, “I’ve never had a woman waiting for me in my bed.”

Arya cocked a brow.  “I’ve never waited for a man in his bed.  I wasn’t quite sure you’d come back either.  You seemed very determined to go alone.”

“I promised I would always come back, even if you tried to send me away.” 

Privately, he was glad he’d insisted on going down alone.  Had Arya accompanied him, the night would likely have been marred by the whelp’s blood on the floor and a very abrupt ending to what was apparently his wedding night.  He sat heavily on the edge of the bed and pushed her hair back.  Arya smiled sweetly up at him, and his heart cracked wide open.

“I thought you promised me some supper.”

Sandor leaned forward to kiss Arya, and was gratified when she wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with enthusiasm.

Surfacing breathlessly, he answered, “Aye, well, it may be a while yet.  The taproom’s fit to burst, and the kitchens are barely able to keep up.  You’ll have to content yourself with . . .”

Arya lifted a brow coquettishly, “With what?”

Sandor cleared his throat quietly.  “You’ll have to content yourself with your . . . husband . . . for now.”

She smiled broadly.  “Maybe you should have told them to just wait and bring us breakfast instead.”

Arya helped Sandor out of his shirt, and was soon pressed against him as they sprawled sidewise across the bed.  Sandor leaned on an elbow beaming down at Arya as she combed her fingers fondly through his hair.  Absently, he traced a filigree across her snowy breast.

“Tell me a story while we wait.”

Sandor lifted a brow.  “What kind of story?”

Arya lifted herself to give him a lingering kiss while she made a show of considering.  “Tell me a story about something that made you happy.”

He snorted derisively.  “I’d have to make something up.”  Sobering, he continued, “The only thing in the world that would have made me happy is happening right now.”

Arya rolled her eyes, but the grin twitching at her lips suggested that his answer pleased her nonetheless.  “Remind me, just how many years did you spend serving the Lannister court?”  She tugged at a lock of his hair to bring him closer. 

Sandor grimaced, considering.  “Twenty years, give or take.  Why?”

Arya kissed him softly and breathed, “That was very well done, ser.  Spoken like a true knight.”

“That doesn’t make it any less true.”

Within minutes, Sandor was so deeply focused on loving his wife that he did not hear the latch of the door lift.


	12. Reprisal

Gendry watched Sandor Clegane bitterly as he limped heavily across the taproom.  He’d sat here all afternoon waiting for Arya to come back down only to be disappointed by the appearance of the Hound.  As much as he hated himself for admitting it, he had no chance whatever of besting Clegane in a fight, even moving the way he was these days.  Gendry had seen enough of the man in battle to know that.  Still, he’d be damned in the lowest of the seven hells if he’d scamper off and give up on Arya just because the Hound tried to run him off.

“Aw, love, don’t look so glum.  I think ‘e’s a good man, even if ‘e’s not much to look at.  He’s a big’un.”  The bar maid blew a few strands of graying hair out of her eyes and winked saucily.  “She could have done worse, ye know.”

Gendry looked up the woman with incredulity.  “Who the bloody hell are you talking about?”

“It’s your sister, innit, that’s gone off and gotten herself married to that big man?”  She tipped her head in the direction of the stairs.  “Asked me just a bit ago to nip up and bring a tray for hisself and the new wife.  ‘Parently,” she smirked down at Gendry, “she’s in no fit state to come down and fetch her man’s supper at the mo’.  It’s no wonder if you ask me!”

Gendry had trouble forming the word, first in his mind, and then on his lips.  “Wife?”

“’at’s what he said, love . . .” The barmaid peered down at Gendry.  “You are her brother, aintcha?”

Gendry’s eyes followed the path Clegane had taken up the stairs and he answered absently, “Something like that.”  He blinked and picked up Clegane’s coin, offering it to the barmaid.  “Tell you what.  I’d like to make peace with my sister and wish her and the new husband well.  You take this,” he pressed the coin into her palm, “and hows about you let me take that tray up to the happy couple?”

When the barmaid brought him the tray, laden with two huge bowls of stew, a loaf of steaming bread, cheeses, dried fruits, and even some shriveled-looking pastries, she looked as though she was having serious misgivings.  After setting a pair of wine bottles on the table, she leaned close on her elbow, bringing with her the comingled scents of sweat, beer, and onions exuding from her ample bosom.

“Listen, love.  Go easy on ‘em, yeah?  You didn’t see ‘em together before you came in today.  I know the way ‘e looks, but the way she looks at him?”  The barmaid shook her head wonderingly.  “She looks at him like ‘e’s . . .”

“A mutt following her wherever she goes?”

The barmaid blinked.  “No, ‘at’s not it.  She trusts ‘im, like.  Like he’s the only good, solid thing in her world.  ‘Minds me a this story I ‘eard once, ‘bout this young king who runs off wi’ a beau’iful commoner and marries ‘er—in the middle of a war, mind—“

“Robb.”  Gendry practically spat the name.  “You’re talking about Robb Stark, the Young Wolf, King of the North.”

He ground his teeth together and nearly turned the table over in his seething frustration as the barmaid prattled on, “Oh, aye, what a love story that was!  Why—“

“Robb Stark and his wife were killed at the Red Wedding!”

The barmaid stood and pressed a filthy rag to her bosom.  “Aye, it were a real tragedy, that, and you know—“

Before she could utter another word, Gendry snatched up the tray and pair of wine bottles and thundered up the stairs, beyond caring if he sloshed every damn drop of the stew onto the tray.  Outside the door, he paused, listening for voices.  When he heard nothing he lifted the latch and eased the door quietly open.

“Fine.  You’re so damn clever.  You tell me a happy story.”

“Mmm.  My mother and father had a happy story, well, until Robert Baratheon showed up at Winterfell.”

Softly, Clegane murmured, “I was there, remember?”

Arya laughed softly.  “I remember.  You were wearing that ridiculous helmet shaped like the  head of a hound!  Very fierce,” she teased.

“Aye,” Clegane answered sourly, “the king had it made in Tobho Mott’s shop to honor me, but I despised the damned thing.”

Gendry’s hands shook, rattling the crockery and silver on the tray.  He’d worked for months on that helm.  It had been a masterpiece.  Irony of ironies, it was Arya’s father who later tried to buy the bull’s head helm he’d made for himself, inspired by the Hound’s helm.  Incensed, he nudged the door open further to peer inside, and nearly dropped the tray in shock.

Arya lay stretched crosswise across the bed, as bare as the day she was born, pressed against the Hound’s chest.  One of Arya’s hands lay on her leg, her fingers twined with Clegane’s, and her other hand was tangled in his long hair.

Clegane continued quietly, “Tell me about your parents.”

Even from his angle, Gendry saw Arya’s face light up.  “In all my life, I never saw anyone that loved one another as much as my parents did.  Even when he didn’t agree with her, even when she was angry with him, which was often,” Arya smiled even more broadly, “he still looked at her like she was the dawn eternal.”

Clegane traced Arya’s face with his fingertips, and Gendry’s stomach wrenched as though a knife had been plunged into it.  “In the capital, Eddard Stark was deeply respected.  He was honorable to a fault,” Arya snorted and turned her face into Clegane’s shoulder, but he continued quietly, “and his pretended bastard notwithstanding, he was well known for his peerless fidelity to Catelyn.” 

The Hound lowered his face to Arya’s throat and planted a kiss there.  “The Baratheons and Lannisters even jeered him for it.  The king tried repeatedly to persuade Ned to join in his whoring, but Ned always refused.”  Clegane gently turned Arya’s face back up to his.  “He was a good man, your father.  He deserved better than what he got from the Lannisters and Littlefinger.  There was nothing in the world that he loved more than his family.”  Clegane caressed Arya’s cheek with the back of a finger, perhaps wiping away a tear.  He leaned close to Arya and whispered, “ I envied him,” before kissing her gently.

He concluded softly, “There’s no beast in the world so well known for its loyalty and fidelity as a dire wolf.  Except a hound.”

Arya sniffed and smiled.  She traced the contour of Clegane’s lips.  “He forbade the bedding ceremony when they were married, did you know that?”

Clegane smiled, “No, but I can’t blame him.  Any man that tried to clap hand or eye on my wife the night of our wedding would be likely to lose that hand or eye.  Or worse.”

Arya snorted.  “No doubt.”  Arya caressed the ravaged side of Clegane’s face.  “Father wanted so much for us to be happy.  Five children, seven if you count Jon and Theon, and only one of us managed to grab on to a happy union.”

Clegane leaned low over Arya and pressed his lips to hers.  “Are you happy?”

Arya smiled wickedly.  “I’d be happier if my husband would come back to bed so I can enjoy my wedding night properly.”

“I thought you were hungry?” Clegane teased.

“Oh, I am.”

Arya giggled softly, and her hand travelled the length of Clegane’s body to loose the ties on his breeches.  Gendry pressed his eyes shut before he could see any more. 

 _I’m not the Red Woman.  Take your own bloody pants off._  

Coming back to himself, Gendry remembered the tray and bottles of wine in his hand.  By the Seven, what was he doing here?  She’d told him in Westeros, and she’d told him here.  As deeply as it cut, he couldn’t pretend that Arya had ever been anything but honest with him.  She’d told him she wanted a single night with him before the Battle of Winterfell, and now she belonged to someone else.  A very possessive, violent someone else who was more than capable of ending a man he found spying on his wife on their wedding night.

Gendry sat down the bottles and tray outside their door.  He almost took the wine for himself, but thought better of it, lest Clegane vent his temper on the barmaid.  Gendry turned to go, but at the last minute, twisted a silver band off his smallest finger.  He held it up so that the scant light skipped over its surface, a pair of antlers and the words ‘Ours is the Fury’ inscribed on the band.  He turned it, and on the inside was simply ‘Arya’. 

He dropped it into one of the bowls of stew with a loud plop, and with a spiteful last glance at their door, said, “I hope you choke on it, you black bastard.”


	13. Beric

Sandor woke slowly.  An intoxicating, sluggish contentment had settled into his mind.  With Arya’s invitingly soft warmth pressed against his back, he was reluctant to rise, even though it was several hours past when he would normally have done so.

Arya’s arm was draped over his ribs, and her fingers were tracing slow patterns over his chest.  Sandor sighed, and Arya’s hand followed the length of his belly, her fingertips now buried in the dense curls at his root.  As he hardened, Arya began exploring the shape of his cock, stroking slowly up the shaft and tracing the contours of its head.  Sweet Mother, is this what it means to be a married man?  To have a woman as eager to love you when you wake as when she fell asleep on your shoulder?

Arya wriggled lower, and her touch swept over Sandor’s hip, squeezed his buttock, and caressed as far down his thigh as she could reach.  A soft, sleepy groan of pleasure escaped his throat.  He felt more than heard a soft laugh against his spine, and sweet, lingering kisses resumed against his back.  Arya pressed gently against the inside of his thigh, and Sandor spread his legs for her.  Her tiny, strong hand wrapped around his thigh, caressing ever closer to his cock, and he couldn’t stop himself from arching against her.  Soon, Arya’s fingers were questing again, now delighting places on his flesh he’d no idea had even existed.

Sandor turned, eager to take Arya in his arms and taste her kiss again, aching to ensure that she was real and not a figment of a drunken reverie.  She answered his kiss with enthusiasm.  Even more than her searing, tantalizing touch, it was her kiss that burned through him.

The first time she’d kissed him, so tentatively, so softly, Sandor had thought that he’d incinerate on the spot from the pleasure of it.  Arya had never flinched away from looking at him, had never reviled his touch, but when she leaned close and pressed her lips to his, for an instant, Sandor was certain that he had indeed died and was in the sweetest of the seven heavens.  To have a woman look at him with longing rather than fear was a gift beyond all imagining.  That it was the strongest woman he’d ever known, intense, fearless, clever, fiercely loyal, passionate, and frankly half mad . . . He smiled broadly and chuckled softly into Arya’s kiss.  By the all gods, it had been worth dying for.  She’d been worth dying for.  She always had been.

Arya rolled on top of him.  “What’s so funny?”

Sandor cradled Arya’s face in his hands and threaded his fingers into her hair.  Again she kissed him, and again, he was flooded with hot, writhing pleasure.  He yearned to bury himself in her sweet, slick depths again.

“I’m just happy.  This . . .”  He stroked his hands down Arya’s back, and she hummed with enjoyment, pressing into his touch.  “It’s like a dream.”

Arya grinned wickedly at him.  “Then it’s time you woke up.”

She tipped her hips, and in the next moment, he was buried to the root in her.  He allowed her to set their pace, waiting until her writhing and rocking above him were accompanied by sweet, soft, panting squeaks of pleasure before thrusting into her.  He didn’t know any woman could make sounds like that, little lone his lovely priestess of death, riding his every movement with evident relish.

Their lovemaking became frenzied as Arya mindlessly pursued her release.  Sandor pursued her with tongue and teeth and hands, burning  to stroke and squeeze, to claim, possess, and conquer.  He pressed kisses to her neck and stroked her breasts until her nipples rose tight and hard against his palms.  He sought her nipple and pressed her securely against him to suckle her breast as she continued grinding her body against his.  Arya keened sweetly above him, a moan of deepest pleasure escaping her lips.  She wrapped her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers into his hair and pressing his face into her body. 

Sandor’s release came suddenly and hard, pressed impossibly deep within his wife.  His.  Wife.  By the gods, just the thought of the words, the knowledge that she was his, sent a shudder of joy through him that threatened to shatter him body and soul.  When Arya came soon after, it was with a soft, choking gasp of his name, and again, he sought her mouth, her kiss, her love. 

They laid in a honied, golden silence for a long time afterwards.  Sandor explored the contours of Arya’s body with his fingertips while she dozed against his shoulder.  He wondered at how the soft morning light sparkled off her translucent northern skin and was jealous of the shadows, nestled in the curve of her shoulder, the arch of her clavicle, the hollow at the base of her neck.  Even with his desire banked from the loving, Sandor longed for the saltiness of Arya’s skin on his tongue, knowing that her exertion was in willing service to his conquest.

He must have dozed, for past midday, he opened his eyes and found Arya gazing up at him, her arms still wrapped tightly around his waist.  He lowered his face, and she graced him with a slow, lingering kiss that sent tendrils of desire stealing inexorably through his body, all the way to the soles of his feet.

Barely able to scrape the word across his throat, he growled softly, “Morning.”

She snorted softly in amusement.  “If you want to call it that.”

Pleased that she was in the mood to jest, he answered, “Is that how you woke your smith, then?”

Arya’s hand trailed down his body, doing something indescribably delicious to the sensitive flesh between his thighs.  “No, that’s just how I wake you.”  She gave him a perfunctory kiss and turned to rise.  “I didn’t stay long enough in his bed to wake him.” 

She grabbed the first piece of clothing that came to hand, which happened to be his sark, and pulled it on.  Sandor’s heart nearly stopped.  Her strong, lithe body was silhouetted by the golden light streaming in from the window, and the untied neck of the shirt fell open around her breasts, chafed into a blushing rose by his beard.

She crossed the room to the door and opened it, retrieving the tray of cold food and wine that had been left for them the night previous.  Arya stoked the fire and set their bowls of stew on the grate to warm before returning the tray and bottles to the table.  Arya poured herself a cup of the Arbor gold and leaned against the table, sipping her wine. 

“If you remember correctly, it was your shoulder that I fell asleep against that night, shivering on the battlements.”

“I do remember.”  He’d been surprised to find her there when he opened his eyes, one hand clutched around the hilt of her Valyrian dagger, and the other limply holding his empty wine skin.  “You really would have stayed with me that night had Beric not turned up?”

Arya set her cup on the tray and carried it back to the bed.  She selected a slice of hard cheese and offered him a bite.  Sandor lifted a brow in surprise at the coquettish gesture, but accepted the food nonetheless.

“I came back, didn’t I?”  She gave Sandor a quick kiss, and she tasted like sunlight and gold. 

Sandor picked over the offerings on the tray, rolling one of the shriveled pastries over in his hand.  Softly, soberly, Sandor murmured, “What I said before, about Beric, it wasn’t quite true.”

“Which part?”

“I do know why he gave his life for us.  He was saving you . . . for me.  Everywhere I looked, men were dying, cut down by the dead or burned up by the dragons.  Fucking beasts were raining fire down on everything . . . everywhere flames and the stench of men roasting like mutton.  I was ready to give up before we saw you.” 

He rose and retrieved their bowls of stew from the grate.

“All my life, I saw the most beautiful women in the world trotted in and out of the Red Keep, all ripe as a peach and throwing themselves at any man they thought could get them a step closer to the throne.”  He beside over the bed, looking down at Arya.  “Not once did I ever want a woman the way I wanted you when I saw you cutting through the dead.” 

Sandor sat down the bowls on the tray and knelt at Arya’s feet, pulling her into his arms. 

“By the Seven, you were glorious.  Every inch of you was covered in blood and you were crazed and slashing at wights like a demon from the lowest pit of the seventh hell.  You were up to your elbows in blood and drunk on the joy of it, and I thought my heart would stop.” 

Sandor stroked a finger over a long scar running from her temple to her throat, still pink from the healing.  “You were the only thing in the world that would have made me go back out and face the flames.  I’d have waded naked through wildfire to get to you.  You were alone, and I was terrified the Stranger would seize you and carry you away.  The god of death himself would have wanted you for his consort if he could have seen you that night.  I couldn’t take one more step to fight for the living or my own miserable life, but by the gods, I’d have faced anything to save you.”

 “That’s why I drug your half rotted corpse out of King’s Landing.”  Arya kissed him gently.  “I wasn’t going to leave behind the only man who was willing to face the Stranger with me, even when all my masks were off.  That’s why I’m here with you now.”  Arya smirked at him.  “Still sure you want to jump off the edge of the map with me?”

“Woman,” Sandor pushed Arya’s hair back from her face, “if it meant I could stay beside you, I’d wrap myself in the Stranger’s cloak and follow him gladly into the flames.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Arya released Sandor and took one of the barely warmed bowls of stew from the tray.  In her first bite, something hard and round slithered off the spoon onto her tongue.  She spat it out onto her hand.

“Fucking Baratheon,” Sandor growled.

Recognizing it for what it was, Sandor plucked the betrothal ring off Arya’s hand, strode to the window, and wrenched it open.

Arya snorted in amusement.  “For fuck’s sake, Sandor, you’re naked!”

“I don’t care.” 

When Sandor glanced down at the courtyard, there stood Gendry, his jaw slack and gazing dumbfounded up at him.  He smirked down at the smith, making no effort at all to disguise either his amusement or his hardening cock. 

He tossed the ring into the dust at Gendry’s feet and answered loudly enough that his voice would carry, “I want to be rid of every last scrap of Westeros, aside from my wife.”


End file.
